Friday, October 30, 2015

I started my day by unpacking my chenille project and repacking my bag with what I need for the Community Quilts bee tomorrow. I’ll be working to finish a leader and ender project I’ve had going for most of the year. Because of our trip to Victoria on Sunday I’ll only be able to participate for one day, but I’ll get a good start on putting the blocks together.

What I wanted to do next was cut out my Seminole patterns so they’d be ready to take on the Texada retreat. There were five patterns distributed and I fell behind after the first one. I picked out my fabrics and was ready to cut when I realized I’d left my rotary cutter at yesterday’s class. I called Deb and she found it and set it aside for me. I had an alternate cutter so, after adding a new blade, I got the next two patterns prepped and bagged. The last two patterns were very sparse in information and, even after drawing one of them out on paper, I still had no idea on what sizes or fabrics I should be cutting.

My next plan was to search online for the patterns but I think the last two patterns were more or less made up by the woman leading the project. The pattern didn’t have a name other than what the leader was aiming for (a butterfly in one case and a beet in the other). What I did find though was a Seminole quilt-along so I downloaded several of those patterns and I’ll add them to my project. I’ll catch Karen at one of the bees and see if I can get some help with her instructions.

As I picked fabric for the patterns I was snapping a photo, loading it into iPhoto on my computer and editing the photo to see it in black and white to ensure I had my light, medium and dark tones right. I did the same thing when I picked fabric for my Twinkling Stars project and thought at the time the camera should be capable of taking a photo in black and white and I could avoid all the extra steps.

I found the manual for my camera online and after several attempts at following their instructions I got to the menu option I was looking for (one little slide button took me from Auto to Manual). Once I did that I didn’t even have to take the photo; the colours (or non-colours) showed up in the viewfinder! Much much easier but I will still add a pair of colour-value glasses to my Victoria shopping list.

I started a new knitting project last night to use up the last of my Chenille wool. Yes, chenille seems to be a theme this month!