Friday 14 January 2011

Another day

... another snow storm!



Supposedly all 10 Canadian provinces had snowfall on the same day, even the city of Vancouver, BC (they of course have snow in the Rocky Mountains of BC, but normally it just rains in Vancouver in the winter - their record is something like 43 days of rain in a row - I couldn't do it... even if parts of the province are called Sunshine Coast). Some of the territories (farther north) had blue skies at the same time, but -35 degrees; maybe it was too cold to snow there?

In miscellaneous news: As I replied to some of your comments, I found something other than my laptop to fit into the "too-small" sleeve I made. Having this pretty cover around my statistics book somehow makes me feel better about statistics. And that's a good thing, because my head is already buzzing with the analysis of some data sets for work!


Remember my blue and aqua quilt?


It's being packed up this afternoon to start a long journey all the way to Australia, where one of my friends finally smartened up and had a baby so that I can start giving my many baby quilts away :) She lives far enough south of Queensland that floods aren't a problem, luckily. Not sure what the point of a quilt in the summer is, but hey, it must get cold there sometime ;)

And lastly, I thought I'd share my Disaster Quilt misery with you. This latest disaster happened back in December, but I've been oppressing all thought about it since then...
Well, the disaster itself happened even earlier. Here's the full story:
I had my triple Irish chain quilt top center finished since early 2009 or something horrendously long ago like that. I finally gathered my will to add borders, but didn't want just blah-solid borders and also didn't want to add more than two strips per body. Strange determination, but there you have it.


So I came up with this fancy 45 degree angle corner pieces on the outside border (the purple in the above photo; the green is the main border). I had a few problems with my calculations - or is that "lack of calculations"... here's a hint - do not eyeball the length of strips when you're attaching them with diagonal seams! After piecing and adding and adding some more, and then adding another strange contrasting fabric in the middle of the border because everything was too short, I finally got it right, or so I thought!

I put the quilt away for a while to recover from all my measuring head aches, then took it back out before Christmas to see if I couldn't baste this quilt to at least meet some of my 2010 goals (remember my sidebar?). Well, I had it all spread out on the batting, ready to sandwich, when I took a step back to admire my handiwork and saw this:


Good thing there are no small children Miss Manners around my place :) Corner on the right is how it's supposed to look. Corner on the left side, not so much. I could have cried! I guess I must have been working late at night once again, to make such a mistake. Argh! This quilt has been disastrous from the start (apart from picking the fabrics, that was super easy...) - all my fault and laziness of course, but frustrating nonetheless!

On some "good" day in the future, I will sit down and fix this corner, then baste the quilt and do some extra large meandering all over the quilt to be done with it with minimum effort! No more fanciness on this quilt!!!

So, do I get snickering and "silly you"s or does anyone out there have a load of sympathy they'd like to send my way????

3 comments:

Anne at Film and Thread said...

What is wrong with the corner on the left? Is it that it isn't angled at the same place as the corner on the right? If so, I kind of like it that way. What are your plans for this quilt? I will send you sympathy, but I'm not sure why you need it because it looks good to me!

ps Glad the snow is making it north to you, although we STILL have several inches on the ground here.

Riel Nason said...

I have yet to finish a quilt that didn't involve my seam ripper at some point. I was working on a little tiny 20 by 24 neonatal quilt this morning and I even had to seam rip some stitches! So don't feel too bad :-)

Joan said...

I have a quilt ready to do the quilting on - One corner is not good, as its a baby quilt and I am late with it - I will have to sort it somehow. I am sure you will get your one OK but I can feel your frustration. Its hot hot hot here, so I can look at your snow and marvel :)