Temperature Blanket - January Completed

Very pleased with the progress I'm making with my Temperature Blanket as I was late starting.  January is now finished and as you can see from the photo, it is very blue!  I'll be glad when the temperatures rise a bit and I can get on to some different colours.

Looking so closely at the temperatures (I'm using the highest recorded for Bournemouth each day) you get a bit obsessed and how much they change.  Also looking back on January I was surprised to see we started the month on 10 deg C although it did drop to 2 deg later in the month.  Glad to say that was when we were in 25 deg C in Gran Canaria!  Looking forward to February when some green will be appearing.

Inspiration on a Woodland Walk

We went for a walk today to one of our favourite places, Blashford Lakes just outside Ringwood.  We love to go there because they have lots of hides where you can see not just wildfowl but also woodland birds.   There was no shortage of birds and we managed to see many varieties for the first time.

A walk through the woodland found many signs that spring is definitely starting so I was glad to have remembered my camera.

New Project

A lovely bag of wool arrived in the post today bringing me a new project!

I've been seeing temperature blankets on Pinterest for some time and following a weekend visit from my daughter Karen, who is currently crocheting one, I decided it was an ideal project to take away on our caravan breaks.  The wool was ordered Monday and thankfully a quick delivery means I won't have to wait long to get started.

I've done some homework on temperatures and where to find my local ones since the beginning of the year, so am pretty much ready to go. Just want to do some samples to decide on which stitch to use and how big to make it then I'll be off.

Watch this space for updates....

Freeform Crochet

I've long been a fan of Freeform Crochet and have several pictures on my Pinterest for inspiration in the hope that one day I would have a go at it myself.

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I had a pack of yarns called Moorland so I used this to have my first go at Freeform Crochet.   It's not very adventurous but using such a range of yarns - from very thin to very thick, smooth to hairy - did make it hard to get variety, so I tended to stick to doubles and trebles and let the yarn make the variations.

Really enjoyed doing this so will definitely have another go.

February Journal Quilt

Another Journal Quilt comes off the work desk!

For this months quilt I started by using a thermofax screen I had made for a previous project when completing the Creative Sketchbooks course.   It was made using a photo of a Euphorbia plant taken on a previous visit to Gran Canaria but despite going back over my photos, I can't find the original photo.

I printed the image on to blue fabric I had dyed myself but despite much thinking and planning, the result was not good enough to provide enough squares to make an 11" square. Once cut, the squares were moved around for a more random look and then after much deliberation I made up the difference on two sides with more of the blue fabric.

The free machine quilting along each of the vertical seams represent the thorns on the plant.

Image printed on paper

January Journal Quilt

My first Journal Quilt of the year is finished and posted to the Contemporary Quilt Yahoo Group!

Following my theme of the flora of Gran Canaria, I used the bougainvillea hedge seen outside our hotel.   It was a riot of colour - pink, magenta, purple, red, orange, white and yellow - colours that I would probably not had the courage to put together in a quilt, so this became part of the challenge.

As I said in my last post, the 11" square format we have to use this year was a challenge for my so first cop out was to border a square that I could cope with.  Using my own dyed fabrics in most of the colours I'd seen, I made an arrangement of half and quarter squares plus a border which includes some smaller half squares.   I free machine quilted the flowers with a vein-type design on the petals.

While reading up on bougainvillea, I discovered that the very small white parts of the plant are in fact the flowers and the coloured parts are bracts, which are more leaf than petal!  So I added some small flat white beads to represent the flowers.

As in previous years, I am using the same fabric to bind all the quilts to give them some uniformity. I had some fabric in my stash which is a mixture of browns/tans/greys and reminded me of the top dressing seen on many of the flower beds in Gran Canaria which I imagine is some sort of volcanic matter, so this seems very appropriate of use.

       

Inspiration

On to the next one....