Happy New Year! Well better late, than never, right? Hope you all are recovered from the holiday season and getting back into your normal routines. I know I am, finally, and happy to be at the sewing machine once again.
I recently started on an Ocean Waves quilt for our bed. It is a bit slow-going and has a lot of triangles (always a favorite of mine!). But it will be worth the amount of time involved once it is completed. This is going to be a large quilt, finishing out at a king size, but will have borders on four sides, so hopefully, that will reduce a bit of the time involved.
Since I am only using two fabrics in this quilt, I am piecing the half-square triangles using the Triangulations software by Bear Paw Productions, printing out the pages of the exact size triangles I need on my printer, and sewing them together. This is my favorite and fastest method for sewing half-square triangles. I absolutely love this method and highly recommend it if you have never tried it.
So have you made (and kept or broken?) your New Year's resolutions? I won't get into my long list of them except for one that I've had for over two years now and have finally decided to tackle----to learn how to use my fancy, pancy digital camera that comes with all the bells and whistles and to learn to take better pictures! My husband bought me this wonderful camera as a birthday gift a few years ago and other than using it for shooting pictures on the automatic setting, I am ashamed to admit that I have hardly used it! I guess I have to be in the right state of mind to learn some of this techy stuff, but the time has finally arrived.
So with the help of some great camera books as well as reading lots of info on websites, I am determined to learn how to take better pictures, learn about lighting and hopefully post better quality photos. It is the one thing that I greatly admire about so many of the popular blogs, their photography is just incredible!
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| Queen of the May quilt block |
Besides learning how to use the camera, there is a whole other learning curve involved and that is learning how to use the photo editing software! So I am determined to make an effort at this, even if it's just baby steps and it takes me months to grasp, I have wanted to understand photography for a long time but have never taken the time to learn it. Here are a few beginning shots, all with NO flash! Using a flash is apparently the first big no-no! Who knew?? Good photography starts with natural lighting.
Don't you just love these old feedsack fabrics? They remind me of candy! I never get tired of looking at vintage fabrics.
I thought it might be fun to let you take a peek into my world! Here are a few shots of our family room and looking beyond into the kitchen nook. . .
The quilt on the wall is the quilt that I reproduced from an antique quilt I blogged about a year ago. I made the slipcovers and pillows on the sofas almost 13 years ago. The slipcovers are on their last days, sadly. I'm afraid if I wash them one more time, they will begin to come apart. I've been debating if I want to buy entirely new sofas with white slipcovers OR make new slipcovers for these sofas, which are close to 25 years old. I'm just so uncertain about all white, if it will be too plain for my taste, whether they will hold up to pets and a husband (!), and whether I will be washing them every week! If anyone has input, I would welcome your opinions and experience!
The ceiling in this room is over 22 feet high, it's actually a little much! I don't think I would do such high ceilings if we were building a house again. We do get a lot of sun in this room from the windows that are up high as well as from two sets of French doors, which is great for bright natural light but terrible when it comes to fading fabrics. Currently I have the upper shades down so the room is not as bright as it normally is!
Until next time, Happy Quilting!
