Hello, quilting friends!
In December, I had a bad fall. It ended up with not being able to quilt for a long time. A week ago, my Physical Therapist okayed me to go back to action. Back to quilting! Back to swim aerobics! Back to leaning over to pick up something off the floor! Cautiously back to picking up things! Cautiously able to vacuum and other household chores, which I haven't even tried yet! Back to being able to do the dishes and empty the dishwasher! I'm so happy to have a clean kitchen again!
In consequence, my quilt for my grandson's graduation, in five days, is not done. My quilt for his brother, who is one, is not done. My family is understanding and I love them for that.
It also means that I wasn't able to finish my quilts for Hands 2 Help. When I told Sarah about my dilemma, she very graciously offered to quilt them for me. What a sweetie!
Both quilts are done by a Jelly Roll Race. If you haven't done one before you won't believe how amazingly quick they are! It requires one jelly roll and about three hours and, ta da!, the top is done!
Here is the first quilt top. I call it Coded Message. There are variations to the Jelly Roll Race. One of them adds a 2" x 2" square of a plain fabric between each strip you join together. The trick is to cut about 18" off of the first strip you sew. If you don't, all the plain squares will line up on one side of the quilt! I had this great idea to use a different size "square" to make the quilt a bit bigger. I chose to make it 2" x 4". Fortunately, I didn't en up with all my rectangles on one side, but they are a bit wonky in where they line up.
Because of the weird way they are spread around the quilt, it looked like a stamped computer card. Those of you who are old enough will remember that the only way you could program a computer was to write the code onto 3" x 6" (approximately) cards. The information was punched into the cards and then run through the computer. It was one card per line of code. If you've ever seen how many lines of code there are for a simple program, you can appreciate how many hundreds of cards you would have for just one program.
When I was in college in the early 1970s, it took a huge room, probably larger than a basketball court to house the computer. If you want an example, watch the movie "Apollo 13" and watch the control room scenes to give you a picture. Also, pay attention to how they figured out math problems. On a chalkboard, plus they used slide rule. Look it up on google, you'll be amazed at how complex math was done in the 70s. And this was invented in the 17th century.
But I digress...
The yellow plain rectangles looked like the punch-outs on the computer programming cards.
The second Jelly Roll Race that I made was the traditional way. I called it Far Out. I guess you can tell I was a 70s kid. Actually, in that decade I graduated from High School, graduated from College, got married and had two children! Far Out was a common phrase from the 60s & 70s. And with me, the 18s.
There is such a mix of different styles of fabric. You just have to stand back and look at the mod-podge and say..."Far Out!"
The close-ups:
Thanks to wonderful, dear Sarah for holding Hands2Help each year! There is so much work to put it together...and it's all for charity. There are three different charities to choose from and each quilter chooses who to send her quilt to. Double thanks to Sarah for finishing up my quilts for me.
In December, I had a bad fall. It ended up with not being able to quilt for a long time. A week ago, my Physical Therapist okayed me to go back to action. Back to quilting! Back to swim aerobics! Back to leaning over to pick up something off the floor! Cautiously back to picking up things! Cautiously able to vacuum and other household chores, which I haven't even tried yet! Back to being able to do the dishes and empty the dishwasher! I'm so happy to have a clean kitchen again!
In consequence, my quilt for my grandson's graduation, in five days, is not done. My quilt for his brother, who is one, is not done. My family is understanding and I love them for that.
It also means that I wasn't able to finish my quilts for Hands 2 Help. When I told Sarah about my dilemma, she very graciously offered to quilt them for me. What a sweetie!
Both quilts are done by a Jelly Roll Race. If you haven't done one before you won't believe how amazingly quick they are! It requires one jelly roll and about three hours and, ta da!, the top is done!
Here is the first quilt top. I call it Coded Message. There are variations to the Jelly Roll Race. One of them adds a 2" x 2" square of a plain fabric between each strip you join together. The trick is to cut about 18" off of the first strip you sew. If you don't, all the plain squares will line up on one side of the quilt! I had this great idea to use a different size "square" to make the quilt a bit bigger. I chose to make it 2" x 4". Fortunately, I didn't en up with all my rectangles on one side, but they are a bit wonky in where they line up.
Because of the weird way they are spread around the quilt, it looked like a stamped computer card. Those of you who are old enough will remember that the only way you could program a computer was to write the code onto 3" x 6" (approximately) cards. The information was punched into the cards and then run through the computer. It was one card per line of code. If you've ever seen how many lines of code there are for a simple program, you can appreciate how many hundreds of cards you would have for just one program.
When I was in college in the early 1970s, it took a huge room, probably larger than a basketball court to house the computer. If you want an example, watch the movie "Apollo 13" and watch the control room scenes to give you a picture. Also, pay attention to how they figured out math problems. On a chalkboard, plus they used slide rule. Look it up on google, you'll be amazed at how complex math was done in the 70s. And this was invented in the 17th century.
But I digress...
The yellow plain rectangles looked like the punch-outs on the computer programming cards.
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| This is what Coded Message looks like, posing with my cactus! |
These are close-ups of the different designs on the strips.
There is such a mix of different styles of fabric. You just have to stand back and look at the mod-podge and say..."Far Out!"
 |
| Far Out, again with cactus. It really liked loose threads. |
Thanks to wonderful, dear Sarah for holding Hands2Help each year! There is so much work to put it together...and it's all for charity. There are three different charities to choose from and each quilter chooses who to send her quilt to. Double thanks to Sarah for finishing up my quilts for me.
