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...