Friday 1 August 2008

Solar eclipse

Today I have seen a solar eclipse. In this part of the world, it was a partial one; the moon's shadow hid the upper side of the sun. We had a welding mask so we could look at the sun while having a noon coffee on the veranda before DH went fishing. This dear man showed once again why I love him so much. (First he told me how lucky he was having me making him sandwiches for his trip, not a common service among fishermen.) When we were having our coffee/tea and discussing the eclipse, he suddenly went in and came back with a cardboard and a pin. After a few experiments with the cardboard (too thick) he made us a camera obscura of a sheet of paper with a pinhole, and another paper where the upside down reflection of the eclipse was to see. He just knows things like that and is always ready to explain them to me. That's love to me.



Now that he is on his way and the sun is round again, I continue arranging the patchwork strips. I'm sure there has been a pattern planned, and it annoys me that I can't seem to get it right. It makes me wonder if there has been something wrong with the strips from the beginning and the quilt never finished because of that problem! This is one arrangement, very problematic in the middle part where the floor is showing through:




Like I told before, the strips are 8 patches long and 9-10 patches long. When I put a short and a long strip on the same row, it looks like this:





There are some extra long strips (two long ones on one row), and one strip will be left over. The repetition is not perfect, and here I just tried to make the dark pieces run diagonally across the quilt. The yellow pieces don't obey any rules. This arrangement makes me think there should not be sashings, but the quilt requires a border that will make us all say Wow! I have no idea what the border will be like, but (with your help) I will find it once the rows are together.


You are still welcome to make suggestions. I will not start sewing this before I have made some smaller projects. This is my 98th post, and I'm thinking to have a giveaway to celebrate my first hundred next week. Therefore I must sew something to give away. I already bought the fabric, washed it and today I'll spend the afternoon with some recorded episodes of Heartbeat and a hot iron. I love to watch British series like Heartbeat (60's in Yorkshire countryside) or Emmerdale (present time Yorkshire countryside). They are great for ironing or folding clean laundry, or hand sewing projects.

8 comments:

  1. Ahhh yes, you definitely need some distraction so you don't have to think about ironing...

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  2. Oh.. I remember my brother showing me that trick with the pinhole in the paper when I was a little girl. That was the only "safe" way to look at a solar eclipse. I don't think we'll be able to see much of it over here in Ohio today.

    I love that second arrangement of the quilt strips. And the yellow blocks going every which way makes it sort of whimsical.. I like it!

    Have fun ironing.. we're going to the Flea Market today :-D

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  3. oh no. darn those pieces. what a puzzle.

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  4. Hi Ulla!
    I wish I could have seen the sun eclipse, the last one I saw is a long while ago!...
    I'm with Eillen, the second arragenment looks better to me, too. I think this one is also kind of a challenge, isn't it? All those pieces to put together!! But that is what we love to do!!!
    I'm going to put a picture of the summer quilt at ficklr, I'm very happy with the results!
    Thanks for organiting this nice challenge!

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  5. Hia Ulla the 2nd pic makes more sense visually- a slight x shape with the yellow and blue.

    Yes I like Heartbeat too- I watched the early series then for some reason stopped in the middle (perhaps it clashed with another programme?) but now I watch it again.

    I was ironing to Ironside but now I've seen them all, am trying for some Murder She Wrote only episodes which I haven't seen or Poirot. Day time TV here is mainly talk shows or Maury sort of things -very poor.

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  6. Hi Ulla, I totally forgot about the eclipse, I had meant to look myself, darn it! I don't watch much t.v. but Emmerdale is one of my favourite programmes, next time I watch I will think of you!! Are you behind us??

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  7. Emmerdale is now on summer break but we are in 2005; Debbie just had her baby, Emily and Paddy are not together and Seth is still in Australia. Heartbeat is re-running the xth time, but new (to us) episodes will start in September.
    I'm making some new rows to the quilt to make it a more useful size.

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  8. Oh my! Are you patient or do you want me to fill you in?????????

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