Happy New Year 2014

Happy New year to one and all. May the new year bring you all that your heart desires and amazing things that you could not imagine.

The year 2013 was dominated by Dear Jane. At the start of the year I had constructed 66% of the blocks and they were living in a plastic tub. So in 2013 I made 8 blocks, probably remade another 6, pieced all of the triangles and made sure that I had the triangles cut out and put onto pieces of paper. I finished creating all of the pieces at the end of April. The pieces took me 385 days to make.

I started constructing the quilt in May and completed it in August. It took me 114 days to add the sashing and stitch the quilt together. 

The backing caused me some problems as I could not decide how to do it. This wasted a month until almost the end of September at which time I started the quilting. I'm at about 50% of the quilting if you count the border or about 80% if you just count the inner blocks. I vacillate between being bored at the slowness of completion and excited as to the fact that completion is being reached. Dear Jane is truly a testament to perseverance.

As at the end of the year I had just reached 10,000 views of my blog. I think this is quite amazing. The different countries that have viewed my Dear Jane page shows that almost every corner of the world is interested in Jane's quilt. I am sure that each person who creates a rendition of this quilt is joined in the highs and lows experience through the voyage.

Lastly as always here is an Irish wish to see us into the new year.

May your troubles be less,

And your blessing be more.

And nothing but happiness,

Come through your door.

Have a good one 

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone. 

May your day be filled with happiness.

Have a good one.

Happy Summer Solstice

 Summer Solstice this year is at
Saturday, 21 December 2013, 17:11 UTC

This is cute, but what I always think of is the fact that it is the longest day of the year, and from here in, the days are going to get shorter and shorter. The birds in the garden are currently waking up at 3:30 and making a joyful noise and bragging about the worms they have caught. :D

I have always liked the summer solstice as it marks the point where Christmas is just around the corner.   

The whole thing about being brought up in the southern hemisphere is that all of the symbols used to show what the middle of winter feast were just weird. The concept of needing to celebrate surviving the depths of winter, when it is amazingly warm outside required just a little more imagination. 

Thinking about it, in this modern world that we live, even if you are in the northern hemisphere in the depths of winter, you can still pick up your favourite pineapples from the grocery store. 

So let's collectively think of our long ago ancestors that sat in cold caves and had to celebrate surviving the depths of winter. 

Last year this time, we were all waiting for the end of the world as we knew it. Well I have had an amazing year and filled it will a whole lot of living. 

Happy summer or winter Solstice and I hope you have a good one.

Cute Date

So that gives you 9:10 11/12/13 this only works as we always have the dates shown as dd/mm/yy. Anyway is is just a cute bit of nonsense.

Have a good one. 

Numbers abound

 Quilting has been progressing at a pleasing pace. I use YLI quilting thread and as you can see from the next photo, I am about to finish a second spool of 1200 yard thread.
As is my want this sparked off a whole lot of number gathering. I have now been quilting for a whole five years .. well three weeks short of it as I started this flurry of making bedding on the 1st of January 2009.

In that time I have used up 2400 yards of YLI thread. 2252 yards of cotton thread to piece the quilts and about 900 yards of other quilting thread that I used on my first quilt. If I just stick to the YLI thread then this is a whole 2 km of thread that has been stitched.

2 km of 2400 yards sounds a lot, but when you see a visual representation, it becomes even more amazing. In structures you would need this repeat of these landmarks to get to 2 km.
 This bridge is 2 km.

 You would need 2 of these scenes to make up the quilting thread used.
If we now talk about all of the thread that I have hand stitched a whopping 5552 yards of cotton.  This is 5 km or 3.15 miles. No wonder I have calluses on my fingers.

Have an amazing day.