More, more, more

OK, 3 more blocks finished.  Each block takes about 1.5 hours to do, maybe even more.  I don't really know since I work in short bursts of time.  That's also how I knit.  It really prevents damage to the hands and wrists.  It's meditative work.  Very simple and soothing, unless your thread knots.  Then you curse a bit, which is also good.  Do you curse?  I do, judiciously, and not often.  I love the explosive sound of my favorite ones, and I save the Big One for really angry situations.

BTW, you might want to click on each one to get the full color effect.  Much better than these little pictures.

I find it very interesting to see how each fabric plays out in a small piece.  The last picture has 3 different batiks.  The center hexie is fairly plain.  You can see it in the middle pic with the narrow blades.  But the fabric in the wide blades is complex, and you only see snippets of it in the block.  I love the serendipity of it all.  I don't much like to plan everything out; it's too controlled for me.

And for those of you who didn't have bad weather the other day, here's the bird feeder with little icicles hanging off it.  I'm done with winter!

And the ice pattern on the porch windows.  It's cute how the ice and the screens played with each other, rather like my haphazard fabric selections.

It's cold and very windy here today with icy places on the front walk and driveway.  I'm staying in.

Judy in WA asked my about batiks and such, and after I mailed her my answer, I thought that I'd also post it here.

It's not hard to stitch regular quilting fabric, but batiks can be a little difficult.  Not all of them, just the ones with lots of colors and the stiffer ones.  Still, these are short seams, so I can rest between them.  And they are such fun.

I place my fabrics on top of each other so I get an idea of how they will interact, and they look  completely different once they are actually stitched to each other. Some of the blocks look overly busy to me, but then I surround them with the plainer ones, and they give it that pop that I like.

Go try it.  I bought 2 pkgs of Valse Brillante, but I have to trace the pieces because there are not enough for a quilt.  I probably should have bought the entire bundle, but I got cheap.  I didn't buy the acrylics.  I like tracing the pieces onto index cards and then adding a 1/4" seam to them.  Cut out the middle, and I can get a very good idea of how the piece will look.  I don't actually cut on the seam; I place my ruler a smidge outside that seam, so the seam is somewhere between 1/4" and 3/8".  The thing with these little pieces is that too much seam is a pain.