Jacob's Ladder update

Ooooh, I LOVE my hour on my own when both girls are at nursery - it is blissful. I have quickly learnt to ignore absolutely everything that screams for my attention as soon as I walk into the house, from washing up the breakfast things to baskets of laundry waiting to go upstairs or come down. Milly's only in for two mornings a week at the moment, which is a pain as I have to do the journey there and back three times, which divides the whole day into hours between driving.

However, as a result of that little bit of time to myself, I have made good progress on the patchwork:

although I am a bit cross with myself for duplicating a print already by accident: a really silly niggle, as it will hardly show in the end! It was intended to be a different way round but I didn't notice until it was beyond rectifying - I really dislike going backwards. I may have to add some stitching to it at a later date....   English paper piecing is really growing on me, simply because once the hassle of putting the tacked shapes together is done, it can all be bundled up and worked on anywhere, without having to be constantly ironing seams: a winner for juggling handsewing & children!

Some other people's ladders:

https://dotcom1144.wordpress.com/category/patchwork/page/5/

http://quilty-cindy.blogspot.com/

Jacob's Ladder traditionally should be a more simple palette of plain white/unbleached cotton with just two shades, usually dark brown triangles and red squares, but I wanted it to look as scrappy as possible, whilst still having some order to it. I didn't quite get this one as balanced as I'd like, I didn't think it all through properly, but again, that's just my perfectionism interfering as usual. It's easy to get tied up in knots over fabric choices: I spend a lot of time squinting to see which are really light enough/dark enough to fit in. The name Jacob's Ladder comes from Genesis 28: 11-22, but it has also been called Stepping Stones, Road to California, Gone to Chicago, Trail of the Covered Wagon and Underground Railroad, all of which obviously refer to journeys with the latter in particular most probably referring to slaves escaping from Kentucky to Canada via Ohio's underground railroad. It's not recorded prior to the American Civil War.

Whilst I'm really enjoying using all these lovely checks and florals, I'm still hankering to release a wilder side of myself and do something a lot more free-form and random: I've yet to work out exactly what this will entail, but it will definitely involve lots of colour and movement and texture. I feel I have to get this old-fashioned stuff out of the way before I can really let myself go off exploring new territory: kind of like learning the fundamentals of drawing and then flying off into abstractism.

Jude rarely thinks of anything to say about my projects apart from well-meant niceties, but he said about this piece that it looked like it had been 'stitched by little elves', which I think is the nicest thing he's ever said.

Twelve more 9-patches to go and then I have to work out how I'm going to do the spaces inbetween...

Change

White white white.... it is slowly coming together:

Since recovering my energy somewhat now I'm in the magical 2nd trimester, I have been on a mission to sort out the house. So I've been ordering shelf-making from Jude and sending him off for plastic boxes so I can put everything in order. I guess my subconscious is telling me that time is running out to do all of this before no.3 appears and I have to go back to sitting around all day breastfeeding... as much as I always wanted to be able to sling the baby round my neck and let her get on with it as I'm getting on with my day, it's never happened that way.

It's also very cleansing somehow to get everything in order: I've never been happy to wallow in chaos for too long, and when I'm pregnant it seems to drive me even more loopy, having to pull everything out of a cupboard to find that one thing you know is lurking in there SOMEWHERE. And even though my sewing projects have slowed right down since I started hand sewing the white quilt, I really want to be able to access my overflowing stash so I can alternate more easily between slow and speedy. I've rushed some parts of the white embroidery, which I kind of didn't mind too much at the time, but the more I look at it now, the more irritating it becomes. The white gets to me after a while too - I think especially when I'm feeling low in myself, a little injection of bright colour does me good: a bit of tropical warmth on a grey Cornish day.

So perhaps I need to get a little crazy again...

I've been playing around with the blog lately, sorry for all the changes, I should have got it all worked out before I started, but there you go... let me know what you think, my two lonely followers/wanderers and anyone passing by :) xx

A spot of sunshine

It never stops amazing me just how much difference a bit of sunshine can make. We've had glorious weather here for the last couple of days and as a result have spent most of the time at the beach, the nearest one to us being about 20 minutes away. We've had a lovely time! It should set us up nicely for the dark days ahead.... I do wish we lived in a more temperate climate, and whilst I could never cope with the incessant sunshine of say, California, just a few months of real summer would make us all happy.

Jude hasn't heard back from his last job interview, so I'm guessing he didn't get it. I don't mind, it's so nice having him at home, though he, I know, would prefer to be earning. The new car we bought for £600 seems to be OK apart from an odd suspension-y noise and a little smoke. The girls think it's great - it's our funbus! - and they love just playing in it on the drive, so if it does turn out to be a lemon, we'll just park it up in the allotment and they can play in it up there!

I've been meaning to make some curtains for our front room for a while now, especially as the nights are starting to draw in. I've had some lengths of fabric which I made when I was first given my sewing machine earlier this year just sitting around waiting to be put together but haven't got round to doing anything more with them, so any day now I fully intend to get cracking with it... but I've been feeling so lazy lately, that sitting and handsewing seems a much easier propositon. I still have loads of things I need to do in the allotment - it's such a mess up there - but again, it seems like hard work at the moment!