One-thousand-ninety-five triangles along with six rectangles make up the face of this heat map quilt, cataloging the temperatures and rainfall of Riverside, California in 2019. I have no plans to make another, but I was pretty proud of myself for keeping up with this, faltering only in my crazybusy November to December (finishing those two months in the first few days of January — which is why I couldn’t get the holiday decorations down until January 7th).
UPDATED DECEMBER 2023: The fabric line I use is called Painter’s Palette by Paintbrush Studios. You can purchase the full line by the yard at Keepsake Studios. Of the four numbers written at the top of the fabric square, the color numbers are the three numbers written on the right side. The first number is for cataloging.
Here is the original Temperature Quilt Key, for those on IG who keep asking for it (it lives here, on the blog); it was first published early in the year, outlinging my intents and purposes.
The un-adorned face of the quilt, today in my sewing room.
I’m thinking of a narrow border before I begin to add other blocks around this quilt, to make it a bit larger.
I have a lot of triangles leftover, so I thought I’d sew them together, fit them into a pattern, somehow, and sew them on the outside.
I guess I have in mind the doorway we saw in Seoul, triangles everywhere.
Thought I’d flash up here a photo of me with four of my amazing granddaughters. I have two more, just as far away. They make me look young.
Danielle agreed to help me lay out the interior of my North Country Patchwork Quilt. I finished all the interior pieces; now on to the rings.
While this shows just the sky quilted, I have now finished the quilting on My Small World. I’m still looking for a good title for this quilt, but My Small World is such a great shorthand. I’m determined to have it finished by Road to California, as I’m in two different classes taught by Jen Kingwell, who created this quilt. Yep, I want her to sign a label. Which means I have to get the binding on, then make the label.
Finished this, too, just about the time I finished up the quilting. I could listen to narrator on this audio book read the phone directory, she’s that good, but the novel is wonderful by itself.
When I’m deep in the tired mind blahs, mindlessly wandering through my Feedly list can sometimes yield nuggets that flash in my brain and perk me up. I follow Zen Habits, and this week Leo Babauta’s words plonked into my brain with a spark.
Apparently even Tarot cards are aware of this brain-fog issue.
What caught my eye was How to Have More Focused Hours in Your Day. I see a lot of these change-your-life-in-the-new-year articles. After having lived a few years on this planet, I usually just ignore their advice, but I did like this:
[Any] success I’ve had in increasing my focused time comes down to three habits: • Asking myself what meaningful, impactful work I can get done today. • Creating space for the meaningful work instead of just doing busywork or being distracted all day. • Working in fullscreen mode and diving in.
So I was interested to see that he and I have the first thing in common. I’ve used something similar for years: after I’ve ditzed around for part of the day, I ask myself “What do you want to have done before you quit working today?” and after identifying that ONE thing, I get to work on it. It’s cured a lot of procrastination issues when I use it.
He expands by noting that “Most of us just dive into our inboxes, social media, favorite online sites, and busywork to start our day. We might have some bigger tasks on our lists, but they get lost in the woods of our day. It’s an incredible habit to take even a few moments at the beginning of your day (or the end of the day before) to give some thought to where you’d like to concentrate your attention. What is worth doing today? What is worth focusing on? What is worth spending the limited time you have in this life?” [italics are mine]
He approaches the second idea — of creating space — in a more roundabout way. It’s almost like we have to trick ourselves. He says “Set aside the next 20 minutes for writing, or getting moving on a big project. I don’t have to do the whole project in this time, but just the act of giving myself more space to focus is a huge shift. This is more of a mental act than a physical one: you just tell yourself that it’s time to focus on this important task. You breathe, and say, ‘This is worthy of my attention and effort right now. Let’s put aside everything else and give this some space.’ “But it’s also hard to get going when your sewing space looks like this.
Notice the chair is clear. I can still do some work. That’s what he means of working in the third idea, fullscreen mode: ignore everything else around the edges, and just focus in. I used to only be able to work in a very clean, very tidy sewing room. But I got over that. I still like to clean it up, and did leave it sort of clean when we went up to Utah to help Mom and Dad clear out their condo of 30 years, in preparation for moving to a senior community, but I brought back various sewing things, a small Viking sewing machine THAT WAS MADE IN SWEDEN (I know, I know!) and I just plopped them around.
I spent three days quilting My Small World, and now it’s ready for borders. I need to put a slim border around my Temperature Quilt before I move forward, and just like that…I am making a list in my mind about what I want to do first.
It’s also helped that the busyness that has been present in my life since — say, about September — culminated with our First Monday Sew Day this past week (pictures, above). It’s quite gratifying to see Hayley, a beginning quilter, turn out such pristinely perfect pinwheels (lower left corner). She’s only been sewing for about a month, and puts me to shame!
Here’s our flier from that day, where we covered snowball blocks and half-square triangles:
Still working on revising Home, Sweet, Home–there are lots of new illustrations to make — as I will be teaching this a lot this year and want a shiny new version to take with me when I visit Guilds. I also began new duties as VP of Communications for our local Modern Quilt Guild, and have my first board meeting next week. I’m impressed with all the service I hear that you give to your Guilds and wanted to do the same.
Finally, I always begin the new year by writing my thank you notes. These, from Quiltfolk, were perfect. I hope you all have good beginnings to your new year!
Since all the recipients of my handmade Christmas gifts have received — and opened — their presents, I can now share what I made for my four children. Gifts for adult children and their families can be challenging. Sometimes we’ve given money so they can share an experience, sometimes we’ve purchased gifts for the whole family — spending hours in the toy aisle at Target — but sadly, most of the grandchildren want something from the toy aisle at Amazon these days. Other years we’ve given a beautiful Christmas picture book.
This year, we went this way.
I had leftover bits from my Criss-Cross Christmas quilt, but had to search to find more fabric to make what I wanted, then used an entirely different line for the backing and binding. When these lines sell out, they are gone gone gone.
I started these in April (in process photos, above) and finished, quilted, and bound them in November and mailed them before Thanksgiving so the families could use them in their decorating (if they wished). I unpicked the upside-down animals, righting them (as seen in the left photo).
We were at my daughter’s for Thanksgiving, and I snapped this quilt, casually tossed on her bed. I thought it looked great. I hope to get photos of what the other families are doing with their table toppers/bed accents/wall hangings/whatever.
We finished up our 2019 Gridster Bee by making these hot air balloon blocks, free from Woodbury Way. They are for Afton, who lives in an area known for their hot air balloon festivals, so it’s a fitting block for her (although she may just really like them, I haven’t asked). I was supposed to do Block 4, but things just kind of morphed into something else once I got going.
Finally, in other happy news, this is a photo of me dropping off three quilts that were accepted to the upcoming Road to California Quilt Show.
We have quite a group that will meet up there, with Lisa bringing friends from Utah, Carol coming all the way from Boston, Kelley from Palm Springs, and the locals (Simone, Leisa, Laurel and I). It will be a gathering, of sorts, for a few members of the Gridster Bee! We generally meet upstairs for lunch, overlooking the gallery of hanging quilts. This year I’ll have a quilt in that gallery as well, as our Inland Empire Modern Quilt Guild has been selected to provide those quilts. I’ll have more news about all of this when it gets closer to Road, which will be held January 20-26, 2020.
I have one more Christmasy post on Christmas Day, so until then, keep your spirits Merry and Bright while finishing up the shopping, baking and gathering. And if you are having a solo holiday experience this year, I wish you lots of good music, great take-out, and quality sewing time.
But it’s also hard to get going when your sewing space looks like this.
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 