February looks pretty different to January, as one would of course assume. It was a whole lot colder on the low side, that's when we got the snow (snow!wow!) but it was also slightly warmer on the highs too. Very unstable towards the end of the month which makes for an interesting interplay of the colors.
As you can see, the tail end of the February column will employ a few more black background half hexies to make up the difference between 31 days and 28 in the two months. And yes, in the Temperature Quilt pattern, Julie accounts for leap years.
Now that I can see two month's worth up on the wall, I think using my hand-dyes is working out okay. Not as clear of a data communication tool as using solids is though.
Looking ahead to working on the months of March, April and May, I knew that I needed to cut the next few temperature ranges. Yes we really got up into the 90's pretty quickly. Also, I couldn't help but notice the warm color story happening on my worktable. These yellow, yellow-oranges are really going to pop out visually.
The next two color ranges (91°- 95° and 96°- 100°) I will need to dye the fabrics for, that would be orange and red. The fabric colors that I initially selected from my stash are likely not going to be nearly close to big enough to cover the rest of the year. Fingers crossed that the dyes I've had all this time are still viable. Just in case, a Dharma Trading order has already been placed.
I know I know this looks like an Oliso ad or something. But I'm really pleased with how well the mini iron is working for this Temperature quilt project. It's just the right size for these small seams that each needs to be pressed open as you sew. And it's very manageable to handle from a seated position. I found that using it for hours didn't overtax my hands or arms.
Also, in good mini iron news, I discovered that you can actually turn it off. It's just not clearly labeled on the iron. Silver on grey doesn't work for my eyes apparently. It also doesn't make a physical click that tells you it's off and the light stays on. But it does really turn off. So that's good to know, as I was complaining about with someone at one of the BAM sew days, you don't have to keep unplugging it after all.
At this point I gently folded up the 20 day's worth of column and pinned it to avoid stretching all those bias edges as I moved it around to sew on the new pieces. That made it a lot easier to handle.
Sewing has commenced on the Temperature quilt. Beginning with January 1st. I got setup with a little mini pressing station right next to my machine. Including the clapper for extra pressed-open seams.
Don't mind the water spots, only temporary. Boy is it ever not fun sewing black on black like this. Remind me never to do this again. My eyes have either seriously deteriorated or I need more direct lighting.
The accuracy of the speciality ruler cut out pieces is really working out for me.
Here's day one of January represented. How exciting to finally begin.
Onto January 2nd!
Here's how the first week of January looks.
A lot left to go for the month.
I stopped sewing for the evening once I reached day 15. It's going pretty slowly together, but I'm trying to stitch slowly and accurately so that the column doesn't get bendy or off.
I've finally managed to do it, I've laid out the first month of my Temperature Quilt. As you can see it is quite looooooong before being sewn together. All 31 days of January represented with a high and a low temperature per day. Looking at it up on the design wall, I really really hope the darkest blue doesn't blend in too much with the black background sashing that goes between months.
I had to make little paper markers to pin up on the design wall for every five days just to keep myself on track. It was pretty easy once I had put up a few days worth. Going from consulting the January daily chart, choosing one piece for the high temperature, and one for the daily lows temperature and then putting them up on the wall. It was easy to lose track. I went back over it to make sure I selected the correct colors. It's interesting how easy it its to see that January was s a fairly boring month temperature wise, until the last week where we had the highest highs and lowest lows. There were these wild swings in daily temperatures from 70° down to 28°. That's because the majority of January was rain rain rain which keeps the temperature pretty steady.
I spent a lot of my time on Friday, cutting out the background shapes for the Temperature quilt while watching the cable news coverage of the big indictment news. My ridiculously oversized labels are working even if they are silly sized.
The two things went together pretty well, I didn't have to look at the screen all that much so I could concentrate on cutting. The numbers and so forth for cutting were very well defined so I could use most of my brain power on taking in the information that was being disseminated for several hours. There's so much there of course, but as a person who formerly held a US government security clearance designation at the Secret level it's too much to bear or even contemplate.
It's hard to describe the way it was drilled into us day in day out, the extreme penalties we would encounter if we ever even whispered about what we were working on or with to those without the same clearance or the same "need to know". Much less actually intentionally taking the documents home and refusing to return them. Or waving them around and boasting about them. And that this was a former president who did all that? Inconceivable.
The fix is of course serious penalties and jail time. Lock him up? Yeah, absolutely. If we have laws, they've got to apply to everyone, most especially to the people at the top who really really know what's at stake. Literally any other person would already be in jail. I would not want to be a US Diplomat or spy right now, having to convince our allies that they can continue to trust us after seeing a Five Eyes Only document on the floor of a maybe unlocked storage room at a un-hardened public/private beach resort.
The thing is, the vast majority of the US public hardly knows or ever thinks about all this international relations or spy stuff. It's all in the bucket of things we can't do much about, so why worry about it. The truth is we will likely never really know the effects of what he did, what alliances fell or were weakened, which assassinations of our contacts in other countries were or were not due to this breach. The power inherent in the possession of these documents is not something we normally think about. It's just a piece of paper, a file folder. But it's the possession, it's who has it, who knows, who's willing to sell it or trade it away.
Ahem, back to our regularly scheduled quilting programming! I had to buy all that lovely black background fabric to cut it up, thanks to Santa Cruz Vac n' Sew, I had either Kona or Painter's Palette to choose from. I chose the latter, and the color name is Ebony not black, I also picked up some more Wonder Clips to keep all these cut out pieces organized, another can of Odif 505 basting spray, some waistband elastic so I can make a skirt.
Also pictured is a SpeedWeve which I got from Amazon, it was getting talked about at the BAM retreat and it sounded very handy for clothes mending. DS saw it and thought it was a kalimba.
If it's June, it's time for ICAD, an index card a day for June and July of whatever I want to do. I'm attempting a "theme" this time around which I haven't really done before.
I think it's pretty obvious what the theme is, but just in case it's: "Words In Landscape"
All of these are mainly watercolor pencil and/or watercolor crayon.
Some have pencil and pen too. This one is pushing the boundaries of the definition of a landscape.
And not all in "landscape" orientation just because they are landscapes.
It was fun to get back into doing a daily card.
Are these all set in the same landscape? It seems like they might be.
I've now cut out enough half-hexies to cover my January temperature range (28°to 70°). All nine ranges pictured here. As this is taking a whole lot of time and will end up being very rainbow-beautiful with my dyed fabrics, I've decided to make this a bed sized quilt instead of a wall or lap quilt. That means I need more of one black fabric to use as the background. I have lots of one and two yard pieces of black fabrics, but of course I need more than that. Sigh. And once I have that purchased and washed, I can cut some out the background shapes required for the background of the January column and finally get started sewing on this project.
I still need to cut out the other 11 temperature ranges that cover temperatures above 70°. And I'll be doing some match dyeing to make more fabric to supply the most popular temperature readings over the course of the year. It's all guessing at exactly how many 66-70° days we'll have, even halfway through the year.
It seems Super Unlikely that we'll have even one 121-125° day, but I'll be ready to cut out a pink half-hexie if we do. A lot would have to change weather-wise very very quickly for us to get there though. But hey, it did get all the way up to 116° in 2020 when we had the fire evacuation.
Actually I probably didn't even need these last two categories on my list and I likely will not cut any shapes out ahead of time.
I am enjoying the colorful confetti vibe of the scraps though.
This is mostly for me, but here's how I did the 120° corners on the mini quilt/tablerunner. Mark a diagonal line at the corner and stop stitching on or just shy of that point. Make sure and backstitch.
This step is where we see the biggest difference in applying binding to 90° corners, when you fold the binding back over itself- align the raw-edge bottom of the binding straight with the bottom edge of the next section around the corner you're working on of the item being bound.
The next step is to fold the binding down back over itself, and then pinning down that fold.
Start stitching (and backstitch) on that same point where you stopped before, at the center diagonal of the corner and 1/4" away from the raw edge.
Repeat those steps with all the corners, join your binding ends as per usual.
I sewed the binding down from the front by machine as this is going to be a frequently machine washed item. The trick to this is to go more slowly than usual, and take your time folding the binding on the corners.
Some closeups of how the binding looks.
I like how a new word is suggested because of the piecing, It looks like "dictrum" maybe?
More views of the words fabric and the quilting.
This turned out to be a fun project, and now I don't have these pieced triangles sitting around.
Here's how the corner binding looks, I did a needle-down pivot and stitched into the binding join at each corner a few stitches and then back stitched, pivoted in the next direction and .
The challenge this time is "Words" so of course I thought of my favorite word fabric that I was using in the Ring blocks I was making a couple years ago. I had bought enough extra to spare a bit for this project.
I unearthed a baggie with the green leftover pieced triangles from making the Jawbreaker pillow and thought it would go together very well with the green word fabric.
I couldn't help but notice the perfectly highlighted word definitions on the seam allowances.
It really was cracking me up, how perfectly it worked out on so many of the seams.
I had to document it as it was soon going to disappear once this got quilted.
Definition of a needle.
There were a few near duplicates of the pieced triangles but I like the repetition in the overall design.
These really go together easily using the Hex-n-More ruler.
As I was cutting the triangles out, I made sure that the words were rightside up on either long edge of this so that the people on one side of the table can read the triangle's worth of words that is closest to them.
Here's how it looks all pieced together. Yes, another table runner has magically appeared...
Definitely needed a border, so it was back to the Tula Pink bin.
I got this quilted very very quickly, just straight-line, nothing exciting.
I think that it looks good and all the stitching will hold it together through many machine washes.
Now to got sew on the green binding to finish it before the meeting tonight!
