Blizzardy Blog

It's another stay-at-home sort of Monday. Right now it's snowing (again) on top of Sunday night's drizzle. This morning plowed or shoveled sidewalks, driveways, and streets were coated with a layer of ice. Wearing a pair of Yak Trax over boots are the only way to safely get around on foot. Bundled up to endure 16 F (-9 C ) with the wind making it feel like -1 F (-18 C), I managed a 50 minute walk with the dog whose bumbling along on the ice gave me something to giggle about.

Quilt-wise, it's time to deal with "point problems" with the Joseph's Coat Quilt Along. Though Kellie (www.dontlooknow.typepad.com) has an excellent photo tutorial showing how she achieves sharp points, gluing fabric over Floriani Stitch and Wash petal shapes, it's not so easy to do! The first time I arranged my petals, the points looked like this. Yikes! There's a hole!

After scrapping those; sanding down the edges of the petal template; drawing and cutting new Stitch and Wash Floriani pieces; and gluing Floriani to new fabric petals - taking extra, extra care with the points - there was a slight improvement. After I hand-appliqued them just a"scosh" of white background fabric shows, but I think I can still improve upon this.

What I can't abide is my outside points. Terrible! These will be redone.

Suffice it to say, this Quilt Along isn't fun at the moment. I'm so disappointed in myself, a supposedly experienced quilter. I'm eating humble pie. Well... I'll dig in again. Perseverance.

Choosing Joseph's Coat Quilt Along Fabrics

The fun part is all this was choosing fabrics. (Perhaps why we have more fabrics in our stashes than finished quilts to show for those selections!?)

Kim, Michelle, and I met to select help each other settle on fabrics. It was fun and educational! After a couple hours of deliberation here's what we settled on.

These are Kim's. The fabric at the bottom is the inspiration piece.

I thought it was important to consider value in our fabric choices. I've heard it said that quilters, especially new quilters, tend to gravitate to medium value fabrics. Check your own stash to see if it's true! We often neglect to buy fabrics with light, or very dark values.

We helped each other put fabrics in value sequence. When I turned the color photo into a black and white photo, it's easy to see the balance of lights and darks, and to see where fabrics fell out of sequence!

Michelle's fabric choices.

She'd like to paint a light raspberry color on two or three walls in her bedroom. Won't that be yummy?! She'll surely dream about raspberry sherbet!

My own fabric choices were inspired by an intertwined jacaranda and bougainvillea that I photographed while I was in Aus. (Given our weather, being in Aus seems long ago....)

Though each of us has more than the 12 fabrics Kellie suggests, we've agreed that more is better. We won't eliminate anything until we actually try it in a block.

Back to that humble pie, and perseverance to get those points figured out. Eventually, we'll have some gorgeous quilts to show for our efforts.