Saturday, February 1, 2020

Goodbye Green January, Hello Orange February

Aaaaaaand..... with the turning of a calendar page, we bid good riddance goodbye to another January.  The first month of the year is always cold and yucky, so it’s never been my favorite. But now February is here. Yes, it’s still cold, but the month is short and sweet and holds the promise of some warmer weather. And some of my favorite people were born in February. You know who you are! 

I’d like to recap what I spent my time creating in the studio during the long cold month of January. First we’ll start with the finishes for this week. Creature from the Green Lagoon is finished, and the vivid blue looks really nice with the greens (even if I do say so myself) The picture isn’t the greatest, however. I’m stuck taking pictures of quilts by partially pinning them to the design wall because it’s just too cold to go loiter outside. You can click on it to see the detail.


This snuggly quilt (filed under "Creature Comforts", LOL) finished at 44.5” x 54.5”. It will be a donation quilt for Quilts for Kids. Our next workshop is a scrap workshop, and I’ll be showing this to encourage the members to save and bring orphan blocks for us to make up into useful quilts. 

I also finished the quilt from squares cut by one of my Weight Watchers friends, Annette. These fabrics are at least 20, probably closer to 30, years old. The colors are very definitely from the nineties. But they were in lovely condition.


I quilted it with pink thread in a swirly flower design that I enjoy using when appropriate. This quilt came together so easily that it was worth the extra effort to give it a little something special.  



It finished at 45x58”, which is more of a youth size. It just seemed more appropriate for an older girl. This will go to Quilts for Kids, too. If they can’t use it, we can always pass it on to another charity. These quilts, plus the others I finished in January, have been added to my “2020 Quilts” tab just under the blog header. Six quilts in January - done! Here is the recap collage (plus one straggler):

Five of six January quilts
I couldn’t add the quilt picture below to the collage above because for some reason, my collage maker software isn’t always recognizing the new .HEIC suffix (instead of JPG). 


Apparently Apple, with the iOS-11 update (November 2019) has begun formatting their iPhone pictures in HEIC (or HEIF), which stands for High Efficiency Image Coding/Formatting. It’s supposed to be the new thing, but that’s according to Apple, who has been known to make grandiose claims before. There is free software available online to convert HEIC to JPG, but I’m not going to bother. All my images from November 2019 forward have been HEIC, and this was the first one that gave me trouble. As long as I can post them on my blog or print them out, then not being able to use a picture in a collage occasionally isn’t enough to make me voluntarily play with computers. Have any of you had any issues?  Sorry for that digression!

Back to sewing.... The Rainbow Scrap January color was green, and I laid waste to my light and bright green scraps, creating a total of 51 blocks, not counting those selvage circles that ended up in Creature or the scrap bucket. The selvage columns were counted as one, but there were 17 large half hexies made of selvages.

I'm linking up to Scrappy Saturday at So Scrappy. I have already sewn my orange selvages, but I’ll save those for my next post, which may or may not be next weekend (depending on internet reception next Saturday). So if I’m not here, just think of me sitting in the sun, drinking margaritas!

19 comments:

  1. WOw you truly made a lot of stuff!! All lovely--I especially am taken by your Creature from the Green Lagoon--My own Green Monstah is awaiting borders --nice work for the month!! hugs, Julierose P.S. hope your hubby is doing better....

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  2. You always get amazing amounts of things done, Cathy! I am really in love with your green orphan block quilt - you made all of those different blocks work together so nicely!

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  3. You made an entire quilt from green pieces. And it's so interesting with all the different shapes in it. Will you do this every month???

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  4. Oh my goodness thats a lot of green sewing! And i see you are working on your selvedge collection again. I did a small selvedge quilt last year and hardly made a dent in my bag. Perhaps I should come up with another idea to use them?

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  5. Have a margarita for me! Great job working through the greens and sounds like you have a trip to warmer climate planned. Enjoy.

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  6. That is a *lot* of work! You deserve a vacation! Love the windmill blocks.

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  7. You sure did sew up a storm of greens.. Like your Sisters Blocks..

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  8. If it’s orange month, where’s Alfie?

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  9. Hope your visit to AZ brings you a lot of sunshine and warmth. It's been cloudy, rain and cool all week here in TX, but we head back to sunny FL tomorrow.
    Pat

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  10. Very productive January! I especially like the Creature From The Green Lagoon! It's bright, it's happy and it certainly does not speak of dreary cold days in January!
    You are so talented and quick! I think I would be hard pressed to keep up with your pace! (maybe if I quit moving around and changing sewing rooms!)

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  11. Hi Cathy! HAHA - yes, good riddance to January although it hasn't been the snowiest or coldest or anything-est here. Just blah and gray. February is the longest short month to me, and now it's one day longer. But I love you attitude AND it does host Valentine's Day. I just LOVE the use of the pink thread on that simple yet perfect quilt! How fun is that??!! How interesting about .HEIC formatting. Leave it to Apple . . . not saying anything more about that monopoly . . . don't need to now! I haven't had an issue yet, thankfully. Enjoy your sunshine (!!) and especially the margaritas - lucky dawg. ~smile~ Roseanne

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  12. Your quilt will surely be appreciated by a young girl. It's so sweet! I want you to know that my birthday is in February. Feeling the love here in IL -- Lol!

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  13. This is wonderful! The way you put all those blocks together and then added the blue sashing and binding really keep things organized and exciting to look at. The bubbles at top remind me of a fizzy drink. You did an awesome job with it!

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  14. Great idea to encourage others to bring in orphan blocks to consolidate into charity quilts. You are going to show them a wonderful example to inspire them.

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  15. Wow!! You were busy in January. You must be SEW pleased with your productivity!

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  16. So much scrappy goodness in Creature from the Green Lagoon - I love it!!

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  17. You had a very productive month! I really like all the different shapes/units in the Creature -- so lively! Yes, HEIC is annoying. For me, both phone and iPad photos go to Google photos. I upload them to my blog from the "from my phone" tab on Blogger. If I copy a photo from my phone (HEIC) to my computer I have to remember to change the format to JPG.

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  18. Creature From the Green Lagoon is both a fabulous name and a wonderful quilt! I wish I could see it in person. I'll bet there are hours of fun fabric peering hidden in all that scrappy goodness :)

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  19. I echo the good riddance to January too - now to get through February which is always the hardest month for me. You have once again accomplished a lot and seeing all these wonderful greens makes me think of spring (good thing, because it's really cold here at the moment).

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