#NotDead (Sherlock Style)

First up, Hi, #NotDead :)

Next up, don't worry that you've missed out on a sea of epic quilts during my hiatus - I have made like, 3. One I made while drunk. The other I gave to its recipient before I remembered to take a photo and the other one is the reason for the "like" earlier on in that it's still in bits, the nephew it was being made for turning one in a fortnight. But whatever.

Because I am a crazy person, as well as still working 30 hours a week and doing foundation studies full time online at uni this year, I've just committed to making THREE 1200 piece pixel art quilts. Like I said, crazy person. They need to be in Georgia, USA, by mid September. I have done the design work on one so far in an epic, 7 hour, hate filled flurry that resulted in me getting 4 hours of sleep last night. I need to move quick, because this is the kind of project that will make me uuuurrrrrggggghhhhIgiveup if I don't see actual results soon. And I have a wedding and a 10 day honeymoon (bride and groom not invited) and school and work and a social life and at least two large scale scavenger hunts* between now and then.

Tonight I will do the counts for the first one and order the Kona. Prelim maths suggests a need for at least four and a half metres for the top alone, with a final size of 1.35x1.8m. Thank fuck it's in solids - even at $8 a metre these will probably cost me around $100 each, and that's before long arming. 

All this being said, I'm thinking I might actually just Beyoncé the damn things. Of course, saying that I'm doing them means they aren't a true Beyoncé, but then again, this isn't an album that will go multi-platinum with no advertising whatsoever. This is just some quilts. But I'll try and at least do some write ups for me to drop after the fact, including a tute on the actual design of the quilts, since that's the bit that is actually difficult. Y'know, if it doesn't make me smash myself over the head with a laptop before then.

*I've just remembered that I also made a quilt out of socks for a scavenger hunt last year but technically it wasn't a quilt, it was just socks sewn together (the definition of a quilt being batting sandwiched between two layers of fabric and sewn through) but I don't think the people running it really knew that much about quilting because we got the points even though it was technically only a sock quilt top. I slept under it at Longy BnS last year. Good times.

Dont let THIS, happen to YOU!

So 10 hours ago when I was standing in the Salvos my brain was all like, "hey, lets buy that brown silk hand beaded top with the draped back and the asymmetric hem. We can shorten the shoulder straps, take out the tag, make the drape be at the bust and straighten out the hem. It'll be fun. How long ago were asymmetric hems "in", anyway? God, that was a flash in the pan. Ohh, better hurry, we need to be at the school in 5 minutes."

45 minutes later Casey told brain that actually, I had a whole another hour before I needed to be at the school. And just a few minutes ago, my brain was like "oh, did I say fun? I meant to say "a horrible idea don't do it you stupid girl put it back just make a white top from that stretch crepe ohmygodyoustupididiotaargh!!!!" Actually, I'm pretty sure what I said. You must have misheard me."

So basically my brain is a lying scoundrel and I'm hemming a beaded silk gauze top by hand tonight.

In semi-related news, this is a friendly reminder not to sit on your bed with your legs underneath you while wearing skinny jeans, lest your legs fall off. That's a pretty important cautionary tale.

EDIT, 3.30am: I think the fact that left to their own devices, my hands are capable of beading over the shoulder join and hemming the bottom, almost makes up for the fact that my brain is a jerk.

Me ow.

The distinct advantage that quilting has over dressmaking is that the photographs, and therefore the bloggage, are a whole lot easier. But, as ever, I'm busy being too obsessed with my wardrobe to quilt. And too crap at taking selfies to logically explain the last few days worth of sewing. Also, I just realised it's 5am, which would explain why I can't words.

...Anyway. I'm still very into Community, and Britta, with my spirit wardrobe, was wearing a denim jacket with grey fleece sleeves and a hood. I still had a denim jacket in my cupboard that had survived every round of salvo-ing purely for the reason that I felt it was important that I still owned at least one, even though I haven't worn it in at least two years, due to a strong fear of coming off too double-denim-y. And I'd rather die than come off double-denim-y. But last weekend I dyed a pair of my skinny jeans black, and that means I can wear a light blue denim at the top without looking at all matchy-matchy. So I chopped out the sleeves and drafted myself a hood design and the only grey heavyweight fleece they had at Spotlight was kinda weird fluffy on one side, slightly silky on the other and it was $13p/m but hey, I wanted a denim jacket with grey fitted sleeves and a hood and I wanted it by the next day. And I did it, and I had it, and it's bitchin, and it's nice to know that after two years of just chilling in the cupboard, it's going to go back into rotation.

As well as this, it's Halloween on Wednesday. Now, for the most part, I'm very opposed to having Halloween in Australia. Good on the Americans, it seems like a lot of fun, but when it's done in Australia it comes off as a Valentines-Day-esque grab for the consumer dollar. On the other hand, we don't get to do enough fancy dress, and Wednesdays are (sadly) not really drinking days (though admittedly, I drank this Wednesday) so the initial plan for a fancy dress drinking party got canned. But there was vague mention of Woolies going fancy dress for the day and I'm pushing for it. I want this. I want costumes at work day, to the point that I have drafted a onesie pattern to make for one of the girls at work in cow print. I want this to the point that I bought 5 metres of black cotton lawn from the $1 clearance rack at spotlight to bulk churn out some capes. I want this to the point that I've offered to make some animal ear headbands, because animal-ears are a traditional lazy-person's costume.

Hey look, teddy-bear ears. And my newly altered jacket. Twofer selfie! I'm actually still wearing these, four hours later. I think when I get up tomorrow I might put them on and pretend like they're not even there, just to see people's reactions. I think they are adorbs, and plan on mauling the faces off anyone who disagrees, just like a real bear in a badass re-purposed jacket would.

But, keeping with the theme of wanting more of Britta's wardrobe, my personal animal ears option is the "cool cats" from season 2.

My sunnies are a bit different and my leather jacket is out in the car, and also on this first version they're a bit too big, but I'm sure I can pop them on someone's head. I need another cool cat to be cool with me.

The handy thing about making these is that I'm sewing the ears onto the headbands by hand, and you can still watch TV while you're handsewing.

DVD commentaries, come at me.

I love coats.

Apart from the obvious stuff like having to do buttonholes and getting a nice corner on the tips of the collar, I think it's a lot more difficult to significantly alter a coat than make one from scratch.

It all started Saturday night on our very quick party trip to Adelaide. There was a boy, (as is so often the case) wearing a quite dapper coat. I love a good coat, so naturally I ended up doing dancefloor things with him. Turned out the coat wasn't his though, he'd just found it earlier in the evening, which meant getting it was a simple matter of giving him my number. Didn't even have to do anything inappropriate :)

Still, even though he said it was a bit too small for him, a men's medium is quite a bit too large for my size 8. So last night I chopped it up and tonight I made a start on putting it back together.

Taking down a shirt is fairly easy, even when they've annoyingly flatlocked the side seams, because it doesn't have a lining. This coat is fully lined but I've given up on keeping the lining perfect, because it's all gotten a bit... complicated. I've lowered the seam of the shoulder but raised the set of the top of the sleeve. I've taken in the underside of the sleeve and in the sides but the underarm was still too low so I've had to add in a bust dart to make the sleeve hole small enough. So the lining's way bigger than the shell, and the shape of the sleeve hole is terribly wonky and the lining doesn't match it. I'm just going to tack it all together and zigzag the crap out of the inside of the set-in sleeve.

But it's 5am so it won't be finished tonight, not that I need it in any real rush, but it's nice to know that I can do it. It's easier making one from scratch though, since you can make a muslin and test it all out.

Speaking of coats made from scratch, today I found some gold... something-or-other on the clearance rack at spotlight so I can make a rockstar coat to match what instagram came up with. And they have solid coloured rayons now! I didn't buy any because they weren't on sale and, well, I've had other sewing lined up, but I'm happy about it nonetheless.

I think I need better things to get excited about.

I wish so hard that it was real...

So a couple of weeks ago, for reasons that now escape my memory, it came up at work that I knew one of my co-workers credit card details off by heart. Obviously, a couple of the girls at front end immediatelly decided we should use them for something, and an epic international holiday was decided on. Over the course of the rest of the shift, this hypothetical holiday was hashed out, attendees decided apon and dates chosen. There's about ten of us. I say "about" because we have been arbitrarily uninviting and adding people as we see fit.

We left for our hypothetical holiday yesterday morning.

First up is 4 days in New Zealand. We arrived at Mt Hutt last night and spent today skiing. Tomorrow we are going to try snowboarding. Then we are flying to the north island, because I want to visit Hobbiton. That's what we're doing Thursday, and then Thursday afternoon we're doing a tandem bungee jump. Annalise, Emily and I are agreed that this is very important, (so important it may actually become a real life - albeit more local, thing) and we want as many of our co-travellers to join in as possible. Brenton has to, we have decided. It's his credit-card we're using, so that's only fair.

Friday morning we are flying to Hawaii. I picked Hawaii, mainly because Shay was there at the time, and I was jealous. I haven't made any hypothetical plans for Hawaii yet, though I believe it has been decided that we shall learn to surf. I claimed my plan was to start drinking on the plane and not sober up till we landed back in Melbourne. That was before I was quite ill on Sunday, so I have postponed my drinking till we reach Hawaii, at which point, mimosas: come at me. Nonetheless I have hypothetically sourced some lovely south island red wines.

I had though it would be fun to photoshop our faces onto pictures of people standing in the snow but Google has been rudely unforthcoming with the kind of starter images I need for that. If there's something worse than finding out that your plans for a huge international holiday on a friends credit card can't follow through because said card only has a $1000 limit, it's finding out that you can't even fake the holiday in a fun way for facebook.

Actually, no the fact that I'm not actually on the trip of a lifetime right now is worse.

If anyone wants me, I'll be on ebay, buying myself some souvenirs, while I sit here in bed eating crumbed parmesan from the jar...

Arty Artness.

Ah, long weekends. The perfect opportunity to get seriously stuck into working on some of your long-neglected WIPs.

Unless of course you're like me, in which case you work all three days as well as drinking on two of them.

And I was kinda happy, because this weekend was intended to be our last hurrah until the show, which is 4 weeks away, meaning that we would have some time to recover. Then I remembered that I agreed to go to Adelaide with Casey and Jeffy for reasons I'm not entirely sure of. Probably mainly to do with Chinese food, which I've just realised I get to eat in 4 days time. Now I'm keen.

As for stuff that I've been making, well, I did some Sherlock Texts From Last Night for the Tumblrverse. Does that count? I used mspaint...

P.S. Lets not talk about the footy. I'm still too full of feels.

Getting high, every night, with every single, every loving girl in sight...

Someone pointed out to me the other day how silly it is that they're called "roofies" when they make you fall on the floor. Nonetheless, Kelsie's Free Candy and Roofie Lexia party is tomorrow night, so while Casey was working on a pedo-van cake, I decided to make some roofies.

Now, obviously, they're not actual date-rape roofies. This isn't Breaking Bad, it's an 18th birthday party. But my original plan, which was to just give everybody Splenda tablets, was derailed by the fact that artificial sweeteners taste like shit. So I needed something else. And I decided I wanted them to be nice and obvious - both obviously there and also obviously not-actual-roofies.

Solution - basically tiny, tiny pavlovas. Beat a whole lot of icing sugar into an egg white, pipe out little pellets onto some baking paper, put another piece of baking paper on top, bake it as low as the oven will go for 5 minutes, and voila - roofies.

Some of them got a bit burnt, but they still taste fine. And about 5 times as many as are here (that's a 125ml tub, about half full) decided to sortof implode as they were cooking, so they got et already. And I made another batch where I didn't put the second piece of paper on the top, hoping that that would reduce the implosions. It did, but since their tops weren't flattened out they look kinda droplet-shaped. Still, much like the ones that imploded, they're still a delicious sugar hit.

For the record, the don't dissolve, and they float. This, combined with the fact that they give you a sugar high as opposed to causing anterograde amnesia means that anyone hoping to actually date-rape someone is going to be hugely disappointed. The effect they have is more like that time we went around one high-school lunchtime with a box of sugar cubes and a heap of those sugar-sachet-sticks. Everyone's gunna get super excited and then need a lie down.

Well, it's an 18th party, they'll be doing that anyway.

So there's this tag on tumblr: "Coat Porn"

Tonight while I was watching Sherlock I realised that the wrong side of the fabric I used to make the very first version of the draped collar jacket would be a pretty much perfect match for the epic trench coat he wears in the show. So now I'm obsessed with finding the perfect trench coat pattern, even though I'm still yet to make the draped front jacket in either the faux leather or the caramel wool I've bought for them.

What's more, it won't be long until the weather starts to warm up, so I've got a pretty narrow window in which to find a pattern, refine the pattern, make a coat and wear it before summer gets here. That's why I spent a good couple of hours on etsy and the rest of the internet tonight looking at vintage patterns. I got a bit carried away, and ended up buying about six of them. Hopefully one of them will be okay.

This is hard.

The Awesome Blitz is on this weekend. It's a big retro themed party that they hold at Dirty Shads these days - last time I went, years ago, it was at a big out of town place called The Barn. But it moved a few years ago, and now I'm worried that it might cramp my weekend somewhat. I know plenty of people who are going, but it could get in the way of the natural progression of the night for us, which is The G, then Shads, then Maccas.

The problem, of course, is the outfit. A retro party needs a retro outfit. I have my fabulous vintage sequined christmas present, but I don't know that the evening will live up to the dress. Also, I only own cowboy boots, nothing go-go boot-y. I could go something a lot more 80s, but I really don't know what. I'd made a decision for what to wear in a general sense, based mainly around my gorgeous new cowboy boots, which I'm thinking were totally worth the $150, and the price of which makes it okay that I'd be wearing a $15 dress.

Is there some kind of magical outfit that I can wear with knee-high black cowboy boots and black tights, that will make my ex-boyfriend feel a bit regretful, look normal at The G and like a costume at Shads? And can I sort it out in the few hours before work tomorrow evening?

The Impulsive, Handsewn Holiday Quilt

Last night, while I was watching weird movies, I was bummed that I didn't have anything to do while I was doing that, so today when I was wandering around shopping I tried to keep an eye out for some little crafty thing to do while I was bumming about my motel room. You know, crochet or something.



Instead, I found some pre-pieced fabric on the clearance racks of one of the spotlights for $4 a metre. And there was some coat fabric for $3 a metre. So I got them both (150cm of the pieced stuff, since that was the width of the coat fabric, and 110cm of the coat, since the pieced stuff was narrower) and I picked some woven tape for the binding, since I couldn't find any actual binding in a colour I liked, and anyway, since this'll be going to a BnS ball, I wanted it to be tough.

While caught in the after-school rush hour I thought about it some more, and figured that maybe I should get some spray baste. So I got some of that at the next Spotlight I went to, as well as some Husky fleece as batting. The three fabrics ($6, $3.30 and $5.50) came to less than the price of the spray baste ($15.95)

What does one choose as a soundtrack to getting high on glue fumes in a motel room, on your own, 500km from home?

Well, I went with Chasing Airplanes by Gary Allen, but then, right now, that's my go-to song for pretty much everything. And once it was all glued, I switched to a bit of Dierks Bentley. That's not a band name, that's what the guy's actually called. Also, he totally looks like Waz from The Block last year.

Amazingly, I got it all quilted in 2 1/2 hours, but then, I haven't done an award winning job or anything. Big chunky stitches on the diagonal through every second row. Double thickness variegated brown cotton, if you were wondering. It took me another hour to get a bit under a quarter of the binding done, but once again, the sewing is rubbish.

And then I devoted some time to trying on all the clothes that I bought today. Huzzah for late night shopping in the 'burbs; I managed to get a lot in cause I could keep shopping till 9pm. No pics though, cause I suck at selfies.

Here I go again on my own...

Man, I have got to stay off youtube - that was 5 hours of my life I'll never get back.

Just as well I actually got stuff done during the actual day bit of today. There was the getting the car serviced, and the sorting out more car food, and the repacking of the under-the-seat-box-of-everything, and the repairs on my fur coat.

It's kinda crazy to think I've had my coat for nearly 3 years now. That said, when you look at it, you can kinda see. There's a lot of food dye on it still, and when that bloke at Longy that year put it on he split a lot of the seams at the back and I had to re-sew them, and I kinda lost it between the last time I wore it an now, and it hasn't fared all that well. A lot of the fur at the top of the back was just tearing, so I had to sew it all back together with some old towel (the one I'd cut up to clean some of the food dye off) underneath it to stabalise it, and then I even ended up just cutting out a heap of the weak stuff and filling it in with a patch of the scrap from the faux-fur roof lining of the new ute. It's not quite the same, but since quite a lot of it is still blue, and it's mainly under the collar anyway, I don't think it matters. Also, by the time I'm wearing it, everyone will be shitfaced anyway.

Tomorrow is my second roadtrip in a week. I think I'm keener for this one - afternoon travel, lone-wolfing, CDs instead of radio, my own car, no definite plans. Should be fun.

Good Questions.

Why is laundry so much easier when you're dancing badly to the music in your headphones?
Why do I only ever get the urge to tidy my room at 2am?
Why did all these coathangers end up under my bed?
Why do I own so many dresses?
Why do none of them look as fabulous as I want them too?
Where did my boobs go?

I ended up finding my boobs in one particular green dress, after trying on SEVENTEEN other ones. That's right, I had 18 dresses to try on tonight. In my cupboard. There are actual dress shops with less dresses than I have. I didn't even try on my fancy dresses, since I'm trying to get started on my packing for Stonerollers next weekend, and I'm not going to wear one of my good ballgowns to a BnS ball.

It's a bit early, by my standards, to be getting sorted for a ball, but I've got quite a week ahead of me. Thirsty Thursday is off, because in the wee small hours (actually about 6am, but that's still barely medium sized) I've got to go into town so I can get driven to Adelaide. As long as my snoring doesn't wake the baby, I'm allowed to sleep in the car - it's a bridal party trip to the city to look at dresses and flowers and such for Meagan's wedding. Three days in Adelaide, then two days at home, then back to Adelaide for a lone-wolf shopping trip, and then it's Saturday and time to drive down to Murray Bridge for Stonies.

Gah, crazyness. So it's best that I start now: two loads of washing done, dress picked, fur coat found but not yet cleaned. It probably needs to be professionally done, but I think they'd disapprove of the fact that I let it get covered in food dye and then put it in a box in the shed. I only paid $16 for it, so I don't feel all that bad, I just know it's gunna make a mess of me when I go to clean it out. Food dye, even when it's dried in, gets everywhere once you wet it again. I'm usually covered in dye days before I even get to the ball, but with it forecasted to be cold and miserable, I'm gunna need my coat.

Heyyyyyy...

Before I begin, I'd just like to point out that the tumblr logo is essentially the facebook logo upside down, and I put tumblr next to facebook on my bookmarks bar when I noticed this just so I could look more closely at the two together, and now whenever I go looking for tumblr, I can never remember where it is.


Aaaaanyway. Stonerollers is in less than two weeks (squee) and, just like for the last 3 balls, my friend Anna has been saying she will buy a swag and come. She came to Harrow, but without a swag, and simply attending a ball will not earn you a quilt. If I love you enough, you get a quilt just for being generally pretty awesome (usually for your birthday, but sometimes for christmas.) If I just like you, the rules are: Baby or swag. That's it. And if I don't like you, it matters neither how many babies you squeeze out of your lady bits nor how many swags you buy: no quilt for you.

Since the purchase of a swag has been long intended by Anna, so has the making of this quilt been long intended by me. I found some bundles of pink batik and blogged them so long ago I can't find them online, and for her birthday I trimmed them down to squares and used the offcuts to piece a pillowcase, but the squares have just sat on the shelf waiting for her to get a swag, so I know how big the quilt will need to be. I think mine is about 100x180cm - long and skinny. But as swags come in different sizes, so too should their quilts.

What's more, the fabrics are all a bit same-y. There's mottled pink, pink with pink swirls, pink with blue swirls, pink with rainbow swirls, pink with rainbow square swirls, pink with rainbow lines... And I can't really come up with a design, so much as a jumble of similar pink fabrics.

So, what I'm thinking is maybe I'll add some strips of rainbow piecing. I've had these mottled solids in my stash for a while now, and I figure if I just cut a couple of strips from the end I'll be able to make a couple of nice little bits of spectrum to break it up a bit. I've got real solids too (the ones up the side) but I like it all being motley.

In more random news, the Vogue/McCalls pattern website is having an amazing sale, $3.50/$1.50 a pattern respectively. I bought seven and the postage to Australia was $25, but these are patterns that retail for $25 EACH here. I plan on making myself this in black, and going around looking super badass, maybe fighting some crime, or maybe just scissor kicking people in the face, because, in my mind at least, that's what you do when you're badass.

But the pants... I'll pass on the pants. They're a bit too genie for me.

If you insist, universe.

So lets say you had planned to spend the night making a pattern for a raincoat from one of your favourite hoodies, but then you couldn't find a tape measure. You'd be all "oh no, my night is ruined, I can't do this without a tape measure (sad face)"

But it's okay... I have the perfect solution...

Just spend the night looking at funny pictures on the internet instead. You know you want to. Take it as a sign from the universe. It wants you to do this. That's why it hid your tape measures.

Plus, Batdog.

Yay.

I have a disappointing lack of yellow in my stash. I didn't realise it till tonight, when I needed some. I found two nice yellows, that worked okay in my bundle, but I only had a fat quarter of one, and 30cm of the other. I chopped and changed my bundles, trying to make it work with one of the brighter yellows that I had enough of, but they all looked weird. I needed a dusky yellow, that wasn't too lemon-y. And I needed to be able to get sixteen 10cm squares and eight 15x17cm rectangles from it.

Eventually I found two matching straggly bits in my corner pile of random bits, and - Yay. It took a diagram for me to work it out, but you can get the bits I need from a 50cm square and a slightly-more-than-15cm strip. Hurrah for the quiltmaths :)

Help?

So I've been thinking lately that I should become a wino. I should get home, break out a comically oversized glass, and get sozzled while talking about "notes" and "body". It's mainly TV's fault - everyone looks to be enjoying themselves while they lounge about drinking wine and having big talks, solving the worlds problems, or organising dastardly schemes. Plus, it sounds better to be having a couple of glasses of wine than pretty much anything else, and certainly the term "cider-o" kinda sucks. And I think it would also help with me being a shitty philosopher - I don't think it would make me better, but it would at least give me an excuse for being a bit shit at it.

And then today GenQ had a link to the manifesto of the Straight Stitch Society. 

1. Life is hard. Sewing is easy.
2. When the going gets tough, the tough get sewing.
3. Sewing is cheaper than therapy and easier on your waistline than chocolate.
4. Don’t make it if it’s not supercute.
5. Don’t let anyone talk trash about your sewing skills. Especially your mother.
6. Sometimes a glass of wine really does improve your sewing. Or at least your attitude. Same difference.
7. A strategically used curse word can make you feel better when you need to get out the seam ripper. But only the first time. After that you’re a potty mouth.
8. No matter what happens, remember that it’s only fabric.
9. If someone asks “Did you make that?” say “Yes” proudly and leave it at that, no matter how much you fudged along the way.
10. Sewing Straight Stitch Society projects will make you thinner, younger, and richer. You’ll see. 

See! even the quilting world wants me to become a wino!

Problem: I don't like wine. This may take some work.

Babies, Trucks, Crappy Poetry and Head-Devouring-Moss.

Meagan had her baby (around 4.30pm, Thomas James, 8 pounds 1, 51.5cm) and cause he's a boy, I'm getting started on my "if it's a boy" quilt - based on this pattern called On The Road Again, since her fiancee is a truck driver. It needs a fair few changes though - the bonnet is too long (trucks have shorter heads here - many have no bonnets at all) and the gap between the truck and the trailer is too big and in Australia semi-trailers need to have at least 3 axles, so there's not enough wheels for it to be road legal.

And that led to this:

Scanned copies, so I can draw all over them.

Which led to this:

Trucks are big,

Quiltmath is hard,

If you expect a rhyme,

You'll be disappointed.

Having done the basic math, if not the cutting layout, I spent the rest of the night sitting in front of the fire crocheting. I even finished a beanie.

Unintentional crimes of fashion. Whatcha gunna do?

It looks horrible - like a killer moss is eating my head. Still, it helped me get a good idea of how much decreasing to do to get a nice curve, and since the next one I've started is using a fluro-pink and white 8-ply, I have somewhat higher hopes. I mean, you've gotta love a fluro and white combo.

Working with what I've got.

It turns out, there's a lot of rainbow stripes in my stash - two thirds of this bundle were just sitting there waiting, and there were 6 more that got taken out and replaced for a variety of reasons.

I'm thinking of doing the Lattice quilt with rainbow stripes and a blue background, just because I'd like to see what it would look like. I'm also thinking of doing it with 4 repeating solids, on a very dark grey, but I'm very slowly writing up a list of solids that I need next time I do a fabric shack order, and frankly, it's not urgent. The light blue of the background is a Prima from Spotlight, and it's a near perfect match to Kona Aqua.

Oh, and if you thought yesterday's maths was hard to understand, this is how it was actually worked out - on the bottom of a cardboard jewellery box, 2 square inches, because I couldn't find any paper handy.

And no, I didn't get any binding done...

Everybody, feel free to ignore this post. It's just the math for the Lattice quilt, in a place where I won't lose it, and can access it from my phone.

To make smaller quilt (as per blue and green) Approx 145cm square.

In prints:
cut rectangles 20cm x 10cm. Total of 36 (18 prints cut 2, 12 prints cut 3, 9 prints cut 4)

From 2 yards (1.8m) of solid:
cut 25 squares 20cm x 20cm (5 across width of fabric)
cut 6 squares 30cm x 30cm (3 across width of fabric) then into 12 HST
cut 2 squares 16cm x 16cm, then into 4 HST
cut 12 squares 10cm x 10cm (from rest of previous strip, and offcuts of 30cm squares)

Sew diagonal rows of squares and rectangles in pairs, except for centre row, which stays on it's own. Add large HSTs to ends of paired rows. Join all rows into top. Add small HSTs to corners. Wallah.

Oh, and for future reference, to calculate the length of a side when all you know is the hypotenuse of a HST; √(c²÷2)

Everything's a thing...

Today I did both a lot, and nothing very much at all. I washed and dried the new quilt.

The front, unwashed

The back, unwashed

The front, washed and dried

The back, washed and dried

I got a package from Thea in the mail, including some uber-cute flannelette, and I need to buy some more thermal interfacing to make this into a new stubby holder.

And in case she was wondering, this was the watch she forwarded to me, saving me $30 in stupid, OTT ebay postage.

And when I got home I finally worked out how to sync firefox across my two computers, I made a little pouch to check I still remembered how to do it, I packed some clothes, I found some car chargers, and I ate half a box of breakfast cereal. As I said, a lot, but not very much, and tomorrow will be more of the same, what with lunch for my dad's birthday, and going off to Adelaide to sew some zips and spend a whole lotta money.