Whew!

testing... 


(and woohoo - it works!)

And up on the design wall at Mom's house is green quilt #1, in the arrangement I posted a couple of days ago. Doesn't it look great? I'm going to do some tinkering before I assemble, but boy, I am pleased. It even has the 3D effect when you look at it from a distance.

Incidentally, as it stands this is a charm quilt - no repeats. I even had some triangles left. Apparently I have close to 150 greens. So believe me when I say I have too much fabric. (My current thinking is that the other quilt is going to be bigger and thus will have to have some repeats.)

Oh, and the pictures visible on the wall are me, approximately age three, and my sister.

Hello and goodbye

Does anybody here use Hello? (For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, Hello is software that adds pictures to your weblog. If you're wondering.) Because it's still not working for me and I'm getting really frustrated. It's not working on either my home computer OR my work computer and they don't even have the same operating system, so it's not just that. And I see from the Picasa forums that it's not just me, but it also doesn't appear that anybody is being very helpful with a fix, either. So if you have any ideas, let me know! I know there are other ways to add pictures - and in fact I used one of them to add that EQ drawing below - but Hello is just so incredibly much easier. Or it was when it worked!

Ancient history

We get a monthly newsletter from our apartment complex. It's 4 pages, a folded 11x17" sheet, and it's sort of interesting, because one side is clearly locally produced and the other side is not. Pages 1 & 4 are customized to our complex; pages 2 & 3 always have general articles - a lot of them are seasonal - and trivia and things like that, and is much more slickly produced. Usually I take a glance at this newsletter and throw it in the trash. But this month there's a piece on quilting. (On page 3, if you're wondering.) "Quilting - It's Not Just For Grandma Anymore!" it proclaims. It talks about how the perception of quilting for most people is the image of women gathered around a quilting frame in a small town, and it goes on to talk about how quilting is changed, and how it's (gasp) even done by men! But it does have a couple of interesting paragraphs in the middle about the history of quilting.

The exact origins of quilting are unknown, although historians believe the art began in China and Eqypt. The earliest recorded quilted garment was found on a carved ivory figure of a pharaoh from the first dynasty (3400 BC), but quilting, piecing and applique have been used for clothing and furnishings all over the world for centuries.

Out of necessity due to their harsh winters, Europeans in the 15th century developed primitive quilt making techniques. Basically these quilts were nothing more than layers of cloth sewn together with a few strong running stitches, but they were the forerunners of today's quilted products.

I have no idea how much research the unknown author of this article did (and for that matter I could have written most of that 2nd paragraph by pure guesswork), but it makes me realize I know almost nothing about quilting prior to the late 1700s. I always say I'm interested in history; maybe I should make it my business to find out more.

One more time

Let's try this the old-fashioned way:


(And in case you've forgotten, or haven't read down that far, here's what my actual triangles look like.)

Picture to follow

Here's a quick mock-up of a possible layout for the green quilt. (I used a block that EQ had already made up - actually each block here would be made up of four half-square triangles, if you can visualize that.) This layout has a nice 3-D effect that I like, although that look might be harder to achieve with a scrappy quilt.

(And grrr, Hello is being cranky and posted the words without the picture. What good is that? I'll try again in a while.)

Today's picture

I was going to put up an EQ design, but EQ is crashing on me, so here's an angel instead. (Hey, I know she's supposed to be an angel because she's in the middle of the angel quilt, but where's her wings?)

Comment away!

I just changed my settings to allow anonymous comments (and as long as I don't start getting a ton of comment spam, I'll leave it this way), so I want to hear from you!

Might make a good quilt

early oleander blooms in the rain

New camera!

(Expect lots of pictures as I catch up.)

This is the quilt that the Friendship Bee made for my mother. It's one of several "comfort quilts" she received since she was diagnosed with cancer. They asked me before they started about whether she would like this design, and I didn't have to think twice about it. She does. She has it on her bed, and she told me today that she loves looking at it because she sees something new every time.

(Since I've mentioned my mom's health - she is doing quite well. She started chemo last week, but she said she actually feels better than she has in some time. So so far, so good.)

I love the back.

Work in Progress

Here is the beginning of the green quilt. I doubt that this is going to be the actual layout; this is just my test to see if my idea is going to work. And I think that it is.

Incidentally, I'm probably going to end up with two green triangle quilts. I'm trimming my pairs of triangles down into two different sizes (3-1/2" and 4" finished) so obviously they aren't going to fit into the same quilt too well.

Roseville

I thought that I had posted a picture of Mom's Roseville quilt before, but I just looked, and apparently I haven't. So here is an old picture of the whole thing. (The picture below is new, though.)