Saturday, November 03, 2007

Snow!

I hung twelve of my bear paw blocks in front of the window last night and woke up this morning to this scene:

The light looked beautiful reflecting off the snow and through the blocks - I'm not sure the photo does it justice, but nonetheless, the snow falling this morning really goes a long way to get over the darkness this week here in Vaasa! The sun is now rising at 8:15 and setting at 4:15, making those 8am classes even tougher than usual! We did have a little snow three weeks ago, but this is the first snow that's accumulated.

I think I'll be able to sew the blocks together today, but I have a few dilemmas about proceeding. My original idea was to do a saw tooth border with the light blue and plaids between two thin
dark blue borders, but now I'm considering a thin dark blue border and a thicker plaid border with blocks of the plaids. Part of the reason for this is simplicity (or ease), the other part is that this quilt is going to have a sibling based on this quilt and I think that border idea is better for the second quilt and maybe having the same border will help them to look like a set. The second dilemma, how to quilt it?! I'm going to do it on my machine at home and still feel a bit unsure about my quilting. I've never done something this large on my own machine. How would you quilt it?

Yesterday, I got a wonderful bit of quilting mail from
Guðrún in Iceland! (Who, by the way, had a similarly snowy photo this week, too.) Thanks, Guðrún! The patterns are called 'My Season' - perfect for me, a Christmas baby! This will work perfectly with the Christmas fabrics I got from my mom last week (on the right).

Now a little blogland news... Sew Mama Sew is hosting 30-days of crafty gift ideas for the holidays - check it out! Force Majeure Farms has a new edition of The Bent Needle out, complete with a mention of my Barcelona letter photos! Finally, just a mention of three of my favorite non-quilt blogs: Nami-Nami an Estonian food blog I've mentioned before, Strange Maps a self-described collection of cartographic curiosa, and Post Secret an on-going community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on homemade postcards.

12 comments:

Lily Mulholland said...

What a scene to wake up to! We're having an electrical storm as I type!

I had a sneak peak at Sew Mama Sew too - I need more hours in the day and days in the week!!

dutchcomfort said...

Ahhh SNOW! So much inspiration on blogs now, it’s wonderful. It’s my first November in blogland and I love it!

Anonymous said...

i used to do this alot, it is like having a stained glass window!

Deborah Levy said...

Wow snow! Hard to imagine here in 80 degree land of south Florida! Love the bear paw...you'll do great quilting it what ever you decide to do. you just have to start and it'll come!

Jeanne said...

Beautiful scene at your house, but please keep it here for awhile longer as I'm not ready! VBG

Anonymous said...

I read PostSecret and Strange Maps too, great blogs.

Unknown said...

I am glad that you liked it.

Magpie Sue said...

If it were me, I'd go with the blocks of plaids rather than the saw tooth border. It will make the two sibling quilts look more like a pair and it *will* be quicker and easier! I thank you for the idea too. I have just pieced my friendship blocks together and want to add a bit of a border to it. This may be the perfect solution!

I tend to quilt around the piecing in my quilts, to hightlight the pattern the patches make. Not quite in the ditch, but not always 1/4" away from the seams either. Depending on the batting you use and how big those squares are in your "paws" you may need to quilt through them as well as around the perimeter.

Lovely picture of the snow. I remember waking up to that sort of thing as a child. I don't miss it a bit now though!

Tonya Ricucci said...

Snow??? Agggh. Glad it's there and not here, though it's pretty to look at. Love that Strange Maps blog and I've been reading Post Secrets for ages. Very cool.

Libby said...

What a beautiful scene to wake to *s* I never really thought about how snow would help to lighten the day . . . hmmmm - now I'll have that on my mind today.
I like the new border treatment idea - ease is never a bad thing - and it's a nice treatment to look at. Win/Win!

Tracey @ozcountryquiltingmum said...

Snow...a long way from here. The sawtooth quilt looks wonderful, almost like a stain glass window. Tracey

Sassenach said...

I enjoy the stained glass effect, too. I keep meaning to make pieced roman shades using quilt patterns (there's a pattern book out there for doing so), but I'll probably be a very old lady before I get around to it.