Thursday 6 February 2014

Take Five

I was really hoping to show you Theo's quilt today. I tried. The weather wasn't great for photos (slight understatement!), but I did try. Here are two of my, admittedly worse, efforts:



It was blowing a bit of a gale and raining quite hard too, and even the good photos are bad, so I'm afraid it's just going to have to wait. Instead, I'll tell you what else has been going on around here today. I can think of 5 reasonably blog related things, hence my post title 'Take 5', so here they are:


1) I actually now have 3 quilts finished and ready to show you, as soon as I can manage to photograph them. Theo's quilt and 2 mini quilts, both with quotes done and all. Unfortunately I looked at the weather forecast this evening and it seems to be rain every day for the next week. Since I can't show you my quilts at the moment, here are a couple of appropriate pins from my Mini Quilts Board on Pinterest:

 
I love this mini quilt, the quilting lines are so effective.

This one is just a picture, but don't you think it could make such a wonderful, romantic mini quilt?!


2) I've been having a bit of a doodle on my machine, trying to come up with a present for someone who loves bowls. I'm struggling so far...


There are bits of it I quite like and bits of it I don't, but I'm finding it hard to put my finger on exactly what I need to change and how - for example, I really feel that the legs aren't quite right, particularly the top of them but I can't work out how to improve them, I had Theo standing in this pose for me several times this evening but it still didn't really help! And also I'm not sure what to do with it anyway, I had been thinking about maybe using it in a glasses' case, but, although it's quite a small piece, it's slightly too high for a glasses' case. Maybe on a bag???

3) I found this book in a very quick trip to a charity shop (I was almost passing!):


I would love to get a bit more adventurous with dying fabrics, particularly wools, so I'm looking forward to having a read of it. Anybody out there have any tips to pass on when it comes to dying fabric from nature?

4) I went into Maria's pre-school today and did some cooking with the children. We just did some simple sandwich making, but the children made it into something more, as only children can. It became more of a sandwich making experiment. I think the most interesting sandwich filling combination was ' ham, cheese, jam, tomatoes and spring onions'. And the little girl who made this sandwich seemed to enjoy eating it very much - apart from the spring onion, it was quite a large chunk of spring onion and when she got to that bit she removed it. But the whole experience got me thinking all kinds of thoughts - thoughts about how and when we get our preconceived ideas about what goes together and what doesn't - whether in cooking or in other kinds of art and making, patchwork being an obvious example, or really in so many areas of life generally. How and when in our lives do we start putting limits and boundaries in our thinking? At what point exactly do most of us decide jam and ham really don't go together? (For a couple of the children it was today!) And how can I try and keep the limits and boundaries in my children's thinking to a minimum, whilst still making sure they're safe and happy and ready to go out into the big, wide world? Deep stuff, and all because of jam and ham!
It also got me thinking about Dr Seuss...


It could so easily have been 'Do you like strawberry jam and ham?'!

I think his writing fits in quite well with some of the deep stuff above, it often doesn't stick to the conventional limits and boundaries we expect - either in terms of style or frequently in terms of content. And I decided that one of my 'quotey-mini-quilts' on my 'quotey-mini-quilt-wall-to-be' has to have a Dr Seuss quote. Here are a couple of the contenders so far:

'You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.'

'Today I shall behave, as if this is the day I will be remembered'

Have you got any favourite Dr Seuss quotes?


5) And last but definitely not least, look what I found out I'd won today in a giveaway over on the lovely blog - My quilt infatuation...


Yippee!!! I get a '7 inch stacker' of these fabrics. So any wonderful ideas from you about what to make with them?

That's it for my Thursday, see you tomorrow with a photo,
Sally.

4 comments:

  1. A I only allowed 1 quote? Ok, I'll stop at 2.
    We adore Dr Seuss in this house!

    ”Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”
    "The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go"

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    Replies
    1. Definitely allowed more than one, bad wording from me, it's a get rid of limits posts after all! I like both these, especially the first I think.

      Delete
  2. We are all a little weird and life is a little weird and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.

    ReplyDelete

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