In case you are wondering how Fionn is going to fit in sewing the Panda's quilt with all her other projects, I should explain that we have decided to not start officially on the 100 Good Wishes Quilt until we are approved to adopt. For that to happen we have to go through 3 months of social worker interviews & assessment which should start in the next few weeks.
In the meantime, I have been thinking about what fabric I can contribute. (I'm allowed to contribute, aren't I Fionn?) I have a brocade vest that was part of my going away outfit for our wedding. It matched the vests that Scott & his groomsmen wore. I am going to chop that up for the quilt. I also want to find something special for Gemma & Ben to contribute. Maybe it will be a piece of fabric from a favourite piece of clothing (that they have grown out of, of course.)
I also have a large piece of pink fabric that I inherited from my Grandma. It has since become the official "Girls' Night In" tablecloth. "Girls' Night In" is a fundraiser for the Breast Cancer Foundation. The idea is that you get your girlfriends together and stay home and put the money you would have spent towards finding cures & treatments for breast cancer. My friends & I do it a little differently. We get a big apartment or a couple of hotel rooms and all bring along some pink champagne and something to share for dinner, then throw the cost of dinner into the pot to donate. We are developing other silly, funny traditions to go with it (such as the magic fortune telling fish) and my grandmother's pink fabric has become one of them. Grandma suffered from breast cancer in both breasts but recovered both times. So, a piece of Grandma's tablecloth will be going into the Panda's quilt to remember Great-Grandma Claire.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Updated stars
Here is our updated quilt diagram:
And a photo of some stars lying on fabric that will be incorporated into the non-star squares:
And a photo of some stars lying on fabric that will be incorporated into the non-star squares:
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Star quilt, Makindu, consulting
Progress continues on the star quilt. I have 6 of the large stars completed, and have procured additional white-on-white fabric to make more. (We want to have some stars spinning clockwise and others spinning counterclockwise, so I thought I would make four of each: this guarantees we'll have enough for each direction, no matter whether Becca makes "lefties" or "righties".)
I should give credit where credit is due. Part of what inspired us to make a raffle quilt for an organization that is personally meaningful to us is the fact that my mother and several of her friends are nearing the homestretch on a raffle quilt for Makindu Children's Program. (This is an organization that provides healthcare, education, and support to children orphaned in Africa.) I have seen photos of their quilt in progress, and it's pretty impressive. I hope to be able to show you pictures when they have the top finished, and will also share a link to the raffle if Makindu puts it up online.
In other quilt-related news, I am helping another online friend plan out her first quilt. (I imagine she may in part be referring back to the instructions I wrote up for Becca last year, which I will be modifying for inclusion in this blog once we get started working on the Good Wishes quilt.) She will probably post about her quilt project on our bulletin board when she gets started (this summer). It sounds like it will be very like one of the Good Wishes quilts in certain respects - but since this is her project and not mine, I'll leave it to her to talk about the specifics.
I should give credit where credit is due. Part of what inspired us to make a raffle quilt for an organization that is personally meaningful to us is the fact that my mother and several of her friends are nearing the homestretch on a raffle quilt for Makindu Children's Program. (This is an organization that provides healthcare, education, and support to children orphaned in Africa.) I have seen photos of their quilt in progress, and it's pretty impressive. I hope to be able to show you pictures when they have the top finished, and will also share a link to the raffle if Makindu puts it up online.
In other quilt-related news, I am helping another online friend plan out her first quilt. (I imagine she may in part be referring back to the instructions I wrote up for Becca last year, which I will be modifying for inclusion in this blog once we get started working on the Good Wishes quilt.) She will probably post about her quilt project on our bulletin board when she gets started (this summer). It sounds like it will be very like one of the Good Wishes quilts in certain respects - but since this is her project and not mine, I'll leave it to her to talk about the specifics.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Friendship stars
What, me, only work on one project at a time? Never!
Last year I taught my friend Rebecca how to quilt over the computer (using lots of words and lots of pictures). We didn’t know how well it would work, but she did a great job - she was very focused and stuck with the task all the way through, and her quilt looked really great when she was finished.
Well, last night we were talking on the computer and we decided that it would be fun to try to make another quilt together - but this time, we'd be working on the same quilt instead of on parallel ones.
I usually make my charity quilts for Project Linus, but this time we thought we would contact a charity near and dear to Becca's heart, the National Stillbirth Society, to see if they would be interested in doing a raffle. Becca says that some of the parents like to imagine their babies as being stars (like in Greek mythology) so she thought we could make a quilt with stars on it. She picked white-on-white stars on a scrappy blue background.
These are two sample stars I made:
And here is the layout we are working on. (She's put together a neat idea for the last two rows, using 6" stars instead of 9" stars, but I haven't diagrammed that part yet):
We haven't talked about what happens after we put the stars together... but I guess we'll see when we get there :)
Last year I taught my friend Rebecca how to quilt over the computer (using lots of words and lots of pictures). We didn’t know how well it would work, but she did a great job - she was very focused and stuck with the task all the way through, and her quilt looked really great when she was finished.
Well, last night we were talking on the computer and we decided that it would be fun to try to make another quilt together - but this time, we'd be working on the same quilt instead of on parallel ones.
I usually make my charity quilts for Project Linus, but this time we thought we would contact a charity near and dear to Becca's heart, the National Stillbirth Society, to see if they would be interested in doing a raffle. Becca says that some of the parents like to imagine their babies as being stars (like in Greek mythology) so she thought we could make a quilt with stars on it. She picked white-on-white stars on a scrappy blue background.
These are two sample stars I made:
And here is the layout we are working on. (She's put together a neat idea for the last two rows, using 6" stars instead of 9" stars, but I haven't diagrammed that part yet):
We haven't talked about what happens after we put the stars together... but I guess we'll see when we get there :)
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Names and meanings
One of the hobbies Sandie and I share is collecting names. So, while I know that she already has some ideas for her baby's name, I thought I would post this list of Chinese names for girls in case it might be of interest.
Whenever I look at a group of names from a particular culture, I can't help but think about what the names' meanings say about that culture. A lot of the meanings in this list refer to the beauty of the natural world, and the images they bring to mind are truly lovely.
Look at many of the meanings of elements in the old Germanic names (coined by my bloodthirsty naming ancestors) and you get a rather different picture. My name book, making a similar point (I swear I didn't lift the idea), cites the following meanings as examples: war, strife, battle, protection, rule, counsel, raven, wolf, and bear; adding that Germanic female names "are no less warlike in meaning than their male counterparts" (A Dictionary of First Names
, p. xvi).
Were we as a culture so single-mindedly focused on fighting back then that we really couldn't come up with anything else worth commemorating? Oh dear.
Really gives me a new appreciation for the 19th century love for flower and gem names...
Whenever I look at a group of names from a particular culture, I can't help but think about what the names' meanings say about that culture. A lot of the meanings in this list refer to the beauty of the natural world, and the images they bring to mind are truly lovely.
Look at many of the meanings of elements in the old Germanic names (coined by my bloodthirsty naming ancestors) and you get a rather different picture. My name book, making a similar point (I swear I didn't lift the idea), cites the following meanings as examples: war, strife, battle, protection, rule, counsel, raven, wolf, and bear; adding that Germanic female names "are no less warlike in meaning than their male counterparts" (A Dictionary of First Names
, p. xvi). Were we as a culture so single-mindedly focused on fighting back then that we really couldn't come up with anything else worth commemorating? Oh dear.
Really gives me a new appreciation for the 19th century love for flower and gem names...
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