All that talk of colour, and fabrics and quilts we shared last week was inspiring and bound to end up in me having to make something. I haven't made anything for at least a week after all, in fact since the Debbie Bliss baby boots went off to their new home...
Miraculous that I only made one mistake given that I was watching Call the Midwife at the same time, talking of which brilliant news that there is to be a second series, it's official Miranda Hart helping to deliver babies as popular as James Herriot doing an All Creatures Great and Small calving. For anyone who is interested in the pattern for the baby boots by the way, it appears in several of Debbie Bliss's books and magazines, I used a variation of the one in The Knitter's Year and Baby Cashmerino wool which is heaven to knit.
So our conversation in comments here on Sunday was all sufficient to kindle that little flame telling me to make something, because go on you know you want to... even though you have plenty of things waiting to be finished. Nothing like succumbing to a bout of Startitis, and Harriet's mention (thank you Harriet) of the Kaffe Fasset quilt design Indigo Points was all it took. Out came Kaffe's book (thank you for the gift of it last summer Cheryl) Simple Shapes, Spectacular Quilts and my imagination was on its way.
I am having to stop myself racing through Victoria Finlay's book Colour, Travels Through the Paintbox. It is a perfect February read, many journeys in search of colour history and natural sources, but I have decided to linger a while and let the colour of each chapter filter through my mind and my eyes and look around me for traces. So I am currently on the lookout with camera to hand, for Ochre, wherever I can find it.
The first port of call whenever I am feeling colour-full and creative is my fabric stash because embarrassingly it is now so extensive after about forty years of quiltng that I know I will find whatever I am looking for there, and of course I wasn't disappointed...
The Indigo Points design is simple enough not to detract from the effect I want. A 6" square nine-patch block of half triangles with careful postioning of light, medium and dark fabrics using a different colour range in each, which could be hand pieced if I felt that way inclined.
and the design reminds me of the cubes of paint in a paintbox ..this is Bookhound's.
So perhaps my wallhanging will be paintbox-shaped.
But what a nice time I have had drawing around my template, leaving a seam allowance, then careful pinning and some precision hand-piecing after so many years of rotary cut machine-piecing. So relaxing as I sat and watched the most perfectly themed film as I stitched..at last I have seen Girl With a Pearl Earring.
Am I allowed to say that though I loved the music, and the colours, and the paint-mixing, and Colin Firth and the perfection of Scarlett Johansson's bone structure... yet I didn't think it was a patch on the book. So little dialogue and everything achieved by gazing and pouting, most of which I probably missed as I was trying to keep my stitches straight.
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