curved piecing

These are some of the fabrics I picked out for shabby chic Alabama Beauty blocks. There are other fabrics I’ll add to the mix as I do more blocks, but these are a starting point.

Once the fabrics were selected, it took me only minutes to cut my fabric, press it to the freezer paper and print the templates on the backs of my fabrics. Then I was off to the races. While we watched Angels & Demons last night, I stitched this block.

The back, which didn’t press as well as I would have liked. I’m on the hunt for distilled water to use in the iron as we have extremely hard water and I’ve been told that using half distilled/half tap water will help lengthen the life of my iron. As soon as I find the distilled water, this is going to be pressed again.

All that rain on Tuesday made a difference. I looked out Wednesday morning and noticed, for the first time, some green shoots coming up in the flower beds on the roof garden. Unfortunately, they’re saying we’ll have a wind chill of -11 on Friday, which I don’t think will do those little plants much good, but then it looks like it’s going to warm up and stay warm. I hope they open the roof garden soon. It can be absolutely wonderful out there on a sunny day in a sheltered spot.

The cats have been busy the last couple of days. Almost every toy is now out of the basket. Last night Lester was very busy with either the catnip pillow, which he licks and licks, or the practice golf ball. Here is he relaxing after all that.

And Smudge doing his lounge act.

One of my favourite things is to play with blocks that have curved piecing. There’s something I find immensely satisfying about stitching a perfectly curved seam. I made these six blocks back when the Orange Peel Inklingo collection came out and design ideas have been floating through my mind. The six blocks in the picture above are going to be made into a Christmas table topper, I think. I may add 3 more blocks just to make it a bit larger.

Last night I laid out the six blocks just for fun. The idea I have will incorporate, in one instance, just the Alabama Beauty blocks (the top left in the photo), while another idea will use four of the different blocks. Now it’s a matter of deciding what fabrics I want to use for this. Perhaps hand dyed fabrics with some batiks or some soft shabby chic fabrics. I think this is my favourite part — playing with design ideas and choosing the fabrics. I know what I want to make and it’s really a matter now of whether I want it to be soft and flowing or dramatic and intense. Perhaps both. Who knows? In the meantime, I get to play.

I proofread transcripts for court reporters. This has now happened to me twice and it cracks me up. I am so used to typing the word Inklingo and thinking about Inklingo that when a witness or lawyer says inkling in a transcript, it looks completely wrong to me and I instinctively want to change it to Inklingo! I catch myself wanting to change what the typist has typed but it makes me laugh thinking about what a lawyer would say upon coming across the word “Inklingo” in a transcript.

I got started on the Anthony Trollope novels last night and, while I initially found the writing a bit stiff, can already see that I’m going to enjoy them. Thanks to Betty who yesterday left a comment about another author, Angela Thirkell, who carried on the characters in the Barsetshire series into the WWII era. I know I’ll probably devour those books as well. I love the idea of a great long series of books following a families through generations.

Lester, alert last night after another day of watching out the window — at rain and more rain.