Well, to take a leaf out of Ron's book, I have decided to update you all on a little project i've ventured into during the idle hours of the days when i'm not teaching in classrooms. :)

2009 Sewing Project 1.

I'm in the process of making a large quilt out of bits and pieces of fabric that i've managed to store up over the last twenty or so years of my life. Mostly because I wanted an excuse to sew, but also because Steve and I don't have a large size quilt for the bed and we currently fight each other for blankets on occasion. I suppose as it gets colder we will drag out the queen (or double) douna that we have, but it's not cold enough for that at the moment, so we are using a single bed blanket and my frog blanket. It's not really enough.

Anyway, I decided that one side of the quilt will be patchworked squares while the other would be larger square blocks. If I were going to be more adventerous, I might have spent time mixing the large blocks with the patchworked squares and have both sides a mix, but I'm not. :)

First thing I did was decide how I was going to make my patchwork squares, and I decided on a simple pattern of rectangles. I need eight rectangles for each square. Each rectangle is 10cm by 20cm, but I cut them with a 2cm allowance around the edge for the seams. Deciding also to make my quilt for a queen bed, and large enough to hang off the sides as well, my quilt will need to be approximatly 3m by 2m. This means that I can fit about 35 squares to a side (7 by 5) and if i have eight rectangles to a square, I need 280 rectangles.

It took me a long time to cut out these rectangles, but i did. :) yay! When they are arrnaged into their squares, they will look something like this:



After I had cut them all, I lay them out and grouped them into groups of 8 that would eventually make up their square's. This is my 35 groups of 8 rectangles waiting to be sewn into squares.


You will notice that yes, i do have some shiny new frog material in there. :) It looks a bit like this up close:
Hooray! Anyway, this morning I managed to sew all of the big block squares that will make up one side of the quilt together and it's looking quite shiny if I do say so myself. :) I've gotten alot better at sewing since I made my last quilt and it's evident even in the fact that the squares are all the same size this time. :)



I also found a new function on my sewing machine which lets me do a straight sitch with a zig zag all in one, so I dont' have to go back over the work a second time to do a hem. Pretty handy. :) I'll have to have a trip to spotlight sometime in the future to get some quilt padding material stuff for it, but other wise, it's about a third done! Yay!

Time to get back to the small rectangle pieces... all 280 of them...

I was sitting at the dinner table with Steve tonight, slurping away at my curry and rice when Steve shook his head at me.

"It's not Ramen," he commented.

"I'm going to be a terrible role model for our kids," I replied happily.

"Yes," Steve agreed, "I'm going to have to shut you in a room and tell the kids: 'Sorry, you have no mother'"

Yes, those are little baby Daddy Long-Leg spiders currently living next to our shower. I'm wondering if I should relocate them to the great outdoors?


This is one of our numerous outdoor spiders. I like to call this fellow the Oreo Spider, because the markings on his back remind me of an Oreo Biscuit. He has gone now, I'm not sure where, but I'd like to think he's surviving somewhere.


This fellow is our local green frog. He was found on the steps outside our unit one night. We often see him around abouts when it is dark - sometimes he likes to suction onto the walls just for a change. He is very green.


This photo has nothing to do with spiders or animals of any kind. This is the chocolate cake I made last Saturday. Yum.

Again I spoke at Sunday Night Live - this time on a personal struggle with Pornography.

www.sundaynightlive.org

We need to talk about issues like this more and more.