Third extension? ... and third completion...

 According to media and rumors and whatever we will most likely go into yet another extension of lockdown, possible even stricter still, although that is very hard to imagine. We are supposed to know by Tuesday night. It is getting very difficult to bear. My husband said he listened to an interview with a socio-psychologist on the radio this morning, and that person lamented that at this stage it is only virologists who are involved in advising politicians. Nobody is talking to sociologists, psychologists, and (psychological) long-term effects on the people who are being locked up are not being taken into account. That is what I mean when I say “what is this going to do to all of us?” How do we calculate longterm effects in comparison to shutdown of shops?  I try to reach out to friends by phone, catching up with them, chatting about what is, and what did not happen. But it is getting more and more difficult to keep spirits up.

And I try to keep myself busy – besides studying for my home schooling and ultimately for my exam. Therefore I can now announce the third finish of the year. Third? you say. Yes, there was a second finish which I wont talk about right now but will show here later. And this third one, too, you will not get to see in full completion yet, either, (although there was a photo of the finished top in this post) because it will be revealed in mid-March as a sort of sew-along for members of the German Patchwork Guild. We have our next issue of the magazine coming out then, and that will include an article on how fascination with one specific block can drive one to unknown lengths.  Parallel to that, the instructions will be published for members of the Guild on the website, and we will be hosting a ‘sew along’ for several weeks on facebook. 

The backside

 

So after taking it off the longarm the other day – having had a bit of tension problems and not too much fun with the quilting process! - 

 

I had to finish the binding in order to be able to get a decent photo for publication in the magazine.

First it was the question whether I would use a white or blue binding. I thought white might have looked more sophisticated and design-y, but as this is a blanket and is supposed to be used as such I figured it’s bad enough that the whole quilt has a lot of white, including the back. And edges in white will probably get dirty even faster than the rest of the quilt. In the end I settled for a blue binding, because I still have some of the blue fabric that appears in blocks of the quilt repeatedly. And as it turns out, the binding is so narrow, it doesn’t really make much of an appearance. 

I also used this occasion to try out whether I like preparing the binding with the little plastic clips that are available now (and of which I have quite a few). I don't use pins for attaching the strip to the backside of the quilt sandwich, but pinning it over to the front does take time, and it was at least worth the try.

Fact is, however, that I don't like the feel of it, I find the distorsion of the quilt sandwich by the raising
through the clips more annyoing than spending the time pinning. Taking out the pins while slowly getting closer to the presser foot is easier than taking off the clips, I think, so I will stick with my tried and tested method of pinning. But it is good to know this. And there are ample other possibilities for using these clips.

It was a good choice to take the blue binding. I like the result. Looking forward to the sew-along. I have never been the ‘host’ for something like that, and it really is not characteristic for me to be doing that. But then writing instructions isn’t characteristic for me, either, and it happened. The virus causes a lot of strange things to happen.

Good Riddance – good-bye to month no. 11

 Biding Time (pun intended) is what I seem to have been doing. 

 

November and I don’t go well together in any normal or good year, but add a dose of pandemic, including lockdown during what would have been 3 weeks of vacation that were meant to be a first trip to the International Quilt Festival in Houston... forget it. Too much anxiety for my taste with the elections in the US ... but one can only be thankful for the result, even if so much still seems vulnerable before the transition is done. More than a complete week without any sunshine at all – something like that kills me! 

 

So I seem to have taken a non-premeditated break from blogging, but that is just as well. I would not have been able to write positive posts, and I certainly don’t want to be lamenting or whining here.

I was making. But not really in terms of art. I am spinning a sweater quantity of yarn I have partly carded myself with my recent acquisition of a carder.

I am knitting, several different projects parallel to each other, and it would make much more sense to concentrate on one and get it done than to be jumping from one to the other.

I taught another online class for the German Patchwork Guild, basics of HST making, and the participants were happy. And grateful to be involved in something that was getting their mind of the pandemic and lockdown measures. As it was doing for me.

And suddenly I found myself writing instructions for a project that could be run by the Guild to keep members happy. I had been caught by an image in a copy of France Patchwork’s magazine from earlier in the year, it got me hooked, I started researching, and so I ended up sewing several large blocks using a stack of printed fabric samples from an Australian company that had still been waiting in my boxes. 

 

I will not show the top in its entirety, although it is finished as of yesterday, as the final decision as to how the set of instructions will be put to use for members of the Guild has not been made. But I am happy with the result and will quickly put it on the longarm. The most remarkable thing about this is that I really do not enjoy writing instructions, as I myself don't like working from them, in neither medium that I dabble in. So this could indeed be considered a miracle of coronal times, on a very small and personal level. (Though I have found myself thinking 'had I known that there would indeed be a way of making some money from writing and selling instructions' as many people seem to be doing these days, I might have taken more care to make myself adept at doing so, way back then. But no use crying over spilt milk, and I am not going to start with that now any more intensively than this, for sure.)

I wanted to enter my yellow scraps quilt from the first lockdown phase in SAQA’s ‘Light the World’ exhibition. But guess what – it was too big. Not my first time... And it had not been made directly for this challenge, but it was a disappointment. Luckily I had an alternative, and entered both, the Quilt that Sewed Itself and the Mellow Yellow for QuiltCon Together. I was a day early for the deadline, so could actually get pictures of the binding, as was required for the entry. 

 

I am not really expecting them to be accepted, but they are getting their chance.

I am participating in an online workshop with Phyllis Cullen and Cindy Richard who have just published their book “It’s all about the face”. It was not my intention to start making portraits, but I liked the presentation the two of them gave for a regional SAQA zoom meeting in August, and now is as good a time to learn something new. And there are a few people whose portrait to make might be fun, so here I am, I bought MistyFuse (no, I don't fuse!), and I am through with the first exercise, in terms of layering. And looking forward to getting started on my own photos or ideas.

A woolen blanket from New Zealand, which came home with me many years ago when I bought a painting from a (then) young painter and brought it back on the plane has become a new mending project. 

 

The hole has been fixed, but there are still several areas that need reinforcement, so there is time to be spent on that. And then I can use it for my yoga blanket when I need one.

Because I have been doing online yoga with a teacher (Kristina Krüger ) I had met during my week-long stay at the Yoga Hotel Kubatzki . Kristina suggested on the first of this month that we take the remaining not too many days of this year to take a kind of inventory of the good things we learned during this strange and frequently unpleasant year. So by the end of the month we would come up with at least 31 things that were positive. I like the idea. And I am already behind on making my list. One thing that I have definitely learned is that it does me very very good to get up before breakfast and do a good yoga workout before the real day starts. Getting up in the dark, with the current mood, however, is not easy. I try. And sometimes I succeed.

Looking back on what I have written, it doesn't sound as if month no. 11 was quite that bad. Nevertheless, I do hope we will be able to travel again, soon, and I can take off during this month, see the sun somewhere and get out of here during this time of year!