Wish I was a weeble

I've been thinking a lot about the Fat Quarterly Retreat.  Naturally I'm getting excited about it, as I believe most of us Brit Bee's are, however I have also been thinking about me, and my oh so freakin boring "condition"...  These days, I don't do a great deal of letting loose and having a laugh - I tend to try and keep myself a little distanced.  Its not that I don't want to have a laugh, I just don't want to fall over...  My cataplexy seems pretty firmly rooted these days, and a laugh, or being cheeky, (or the other end of the scale and getting upset or annoyed) causes anything from losing my vision, my facial muscles slackening (making me look a right twat) to the whole collapse in a heap fall over.  I really don't want to be doin ANY of that at the FQ retreat.  But I DO want to have a good laugh there, and I am rather cheeky - some of you know too well - so I'd like to be able to be myself.

Years ago when I was going through the motions of trying every single medication available to me I did try something that helped with the Cataplexy.  From what I remembered, I took this pill and for the first week or so my narcolepsy would go a bit mental, but then it would calm down, back to normal, but without the Cataplexy.  Now I'd stopped taking it because after 6 months or so of continually upping the dosage it just wasn't having much effect any more.   However, FQ retreat is 3 months away...
On Friday I went to the docs and got the meds.

On Saturday afternoon I started to feel a bit queasy, and I couldn't really face eating anything other than a bit of toast.  Saturday evening, I started to get hot flushes...  My temperature rocketed and I still felt queasy, so I went to bed.
Sunday morning I woke up feeling terrible.  I was sick, I had a nasty trip to the toilet..  Then I looked in the mirror, and I had the freakiest eyes...  Massive, enormous black pupils.  I shut my eyes and opened them again.  Still massive.  I shone a light in my eyes.  Still massive.  Hardly any Iris at all, it looked so creepy.
I took my freaky dilated pupils and curled up on the sofa under a quilt for the day.
All day and night I would get waves of nausea, I couldnt eat, pins and needles all over my body, random uncontrollable shaking.  I kept yawning all the time, yawning like I was trying to split my head open Muppet style...
Monday was just the same, and not having eaten I was really feeble and shaky too.  My heart would suddenly start racing.  My head was hurting.  I gave in and called the doc.  Every last thing I was feeling was just a "common" side effect for the Cataplexy pills.  Common or not, the doc said I should stop immediately.  As much as I wanted to get rid of the cataplexy for my trip away, I had to agree, I couldn't cope with all that.

Its now 48 hrs since I took the pills and I'm starting to feel much better.  Cant help but feel a bit gutted though, my stand by "I can always take the cataplexy pills again" is no more.  I'm always going wobble and nothings going to stop me falling over...  Sucks.

So that was my weekend.   Fortunately I had time on Friday to make this....

Natural Linen with rainbow scraps band and hand stitching.  Approx 10 x 11", wide flat bottom, pocket inside.

And time this evening to make this...

Grey Linen with rainbow scrappy blocks and rainbow band, 9" square approx, shallow bottom, divider section inside. 

One of which will go to my partner in the Mouthy Stitches Zippy pouch swap.
Now to get caught up with my For the Love of Solids swap.....  oh help!!


ps  If anyone gets muddled up with their bits for the Stained QAL blocks, I've uploaded another "helpful diagram" with each block and the sizes of  its component parts.   Click here to go to it.

You did what?!

Miss Elliecat do close your mouth...

So.  Having promised the "block assembly" post for the Stained QAL, I spent 2.5hrs last night carefully, painstakingly photographing every stage of the block assembly.  I got some pretty pictures despite the bad lighting... It was a bit of a push getting it all done, but, I knew that after spending the morning running errands and getting the shopping (return of man junk import) in I would not be fit for anything other than sitting on the sofa for the rest of the day today.  

And I was right.  Well, actually, I underestimated my uselessness.  I've mentioned a few times this bloody annoying thing I get, Automatic Behaviour.  Most people experience it once in a blue moon, lucky people like me have to actually expect it, on a pretty much daily basis.  So anyway.  I'm sitting there, downloading the photos from the camera to laptop, and the next thing I know its a full 7 minutes later.  There are no photos on my laptop.  I've looked everywhere.  Recycling bin and all.  No photos.  Damn it, I thought, I'll have to do that again.  

You know what's coming dont you....  Yup.  They are not on the camera any more either.  Gone.  Alllllll gone.  

So, apologies for the photoless instructions, bit crap I know, but I've got too many swap commitments to re-do it next week I'm afraid.  I hope these instructions will suffice in the mean time!

*CLICK HERE FOR BLOCK CONSTRUCTION INSTRUCTIONS!*

Best of luck!  

Past and future post

Thank you so much to everyone who commented on my last post, helping me figure out the steps to succuessfully choosing fabrics.  It was a great read finding out how you all go about it, what you all think about it, and awffy nice of those of you who said I'm not doin too badly so far!  And as for those who encouraged me to increase my stash.....  WOOHOO!   hehehe...

I have some winners to announce!  The "lucky" winners of my fugly fabric from the post before my last post have been selected.  I did the whole "names on a bit of paper to be pulled out of the bag" but totally forgot to photograph it.  Terribly poor show I know, but you're just going to have to trust me cos I cant be arsed doin that again, I just binned all those teeny bits of paper (after chasing Ellicat round the room to get a few of them off her).  Not doing that again.
Anyway... We have winners...

                           For the checks and swirly blue FQs   -  Maxine

                           For the shiny red paisley stuff             -  Josephine
                         
                           For the toy box panel (with scary monkey)  -  Gwen

And going back even further to the Stained QAL cutting post...  that feels like all I've been doing for the last 2 weeks...

cutting out of Fabric One...  

Just for anyone who actually looked at the cutting guide (and ran away screaming) here is proof that I am that fussy....  Well, I wouldnt ask you to do something I wouldnt...would I?

All the pretty little cut pieces in their organised little baggies...  Stop laughing Cindy...

And just to make things a little more interesting...

                                                                      .... I used two different fabrics to cut number 11...

But despite the over whelming feeling that all that cutting took weeks and weeks, I have actually been sleeping a lot, and, and I did sew something.
Leila @ Where the Orchids Grow did a wonderful post with a paper piecing pattern.

*CLICK HERE TO GO TO LEILAS PROPER PATTERN!*

Now I was very keen to give it a go, but... well...  it was for freezer paper piecing which I've not tried yet, and it had a few too many toatty wee triangles for me to cope with...  So, I used Leilas pattern as a guide and had my first go at drawing my own foundation piecing pattern!  I cut down on the triangles a bit too...  

Getting started with my Foundation piecing pattern

My take on Leilas fab cuppa pattern

Mum has a habit of leaving her hot cups of tea on books.... mum also got a Kindle from dad....  So to deter her from leaving cups of tea on the kindle, I made it a nice thick cover!

Mums kindle cover 

And on to future post... I will get the "put the blocks together" Stained QAL post done asap, fingers crossed it might even be up tomorrow... but we'll see...

Advice sharing here....(please!)

How do you choose fabrics for a quilt?  Do you start with a quilt pattern in mind?  Do you stick to one fabric line?


I consider this a subject that I do not know the answer to, I am very much still learning how to do this!  
I'm not just wondering about colours, I know there are some wonderful web pages like Design Seeds and Kuler which can provide you with hours of fun finding lovely colour schemes.  Oh yes.  I've spent hours and hours on them!  I wanted to do Lynnes Dead Simple quilt, but I just couldn't pick one favourite colour scheme.  I ended up taking a whole moda charm pack and starting the as yet unfinished Dead Undecided quilt....  Anyway.  I'm talking about solids or prints, or both.  Flowers or shapes.  Or both.  How do you select your fabrics?


To begin with, I thought the only way I'd be able to get it right would be to just buy collection bundles, or precuts.  

Echo by Lotta Jansdotter

After all, the designers are professionals, they are presenting us with a selection of fabrics that all go together, so why not just use them?  Why not indeed.  I haven't stopped doing that and I'm quite sure I wont stop either.  However...
I started to feel that I shouldn't just be doing that, that I was "cheating" doing that, maybe that was a teeny bit, well, boring.  So, I started to try and mix it  up a bit.  Not having access to a large fabric shop and doing 99% of my shopping on line, that really wasn't easy. 

I've tried making "bundles" as in mosaics from shop pics - like a lot of us did for bloggers choice competition - but shopping only online does mean you are relying entirely on the photo that the shop uses to be 100% accurate and some of the time they arent too hot...
  

Remember my bee month brain fart plan of a black & blue quilt?   It took months and many sale pages to come up with these!  I even ended up with a whole separate quilt's worth of "blues" that look more teal or green in real life...


Now I have to say quite clearly, I LOVE my bee blocks, and will be making the quilt top, and I will absolutely ADORE my quilt.  But to be honest, I don't think I did a very good job with my fabric picking!  The more I see my black and blue bundle, the more I feel that it is a bit disjointed.  It lacks any kind of cohesion.  Perhaps they need to have more than just a general colour in common... 
The biggest problem I think, is that there are one or two prints here that I don't actually like all that much.  Oh I feel terrible saying that.  I got so obsessed with the black and blue plan that yes, I did include a couple of fabrics that I don't really like all that much purely because they met the "black and blue" plan so well.  So, its more important that you love them than whether you think they're a perfect fit.


When thinking up my stained quilt, I had better luck - although possibly because I started with prints from a designer line...  I started with 5 prints from Silent Cinema by Jenean Morrison, the pink colourway.   Colour wise, they were mostly grey, but two had bits of pink in them.  I like that....  So I started hunting down greys, even found one with some pink in it.  That's really all I was thinking at the time.  That, and the fact that there was one print in particular that was special.  A large scale but very detailed pattern, with no "right way up", and OMG I love it.  So, I wanted that print to be the star of the show, and when picking other fabrics I kept in mind that I wanted them as a supporting cast!

I like the way these came together in the end quilt, although I still think I should do better...  (surprise surprise) 


These days I have a bit more in the way of a stash to look through, which is definitely a help...

Mum and I came up with this pick for a quilt we worked on whilst she was here.  I think its a pretty successful mix.  This time, not only is it a colour theme (ash grey solid background, green prints, one yellow green, and one bright orange) but when you look at the patterns there are other similarities too.  There is a very geometric thing going on.  Its all dots, squares and crosses...  Also love that the green on the far left has a teeny bit of orange in it.  The pattern scale all seems to be about the same size too - I'm not sure that's entirely a good thing.  I'm happy with the quilt we made, but in a different quilt pattern I think this bundle may just be lacking a different scale print.


At the same time, mum came up with this pick from my scraps.

I think this is a lovely selection!  I complemented mum on her subtle curvy small circles theme that runs through almost all the prints.  She said she hadn't noticed that...  


This struck me as a great way for auditioning prints for your own bundle, and I think I've found a new and slightly cheaper alternative to bundle buying addiction...  Kate from M is for Make does a wonderful fat 16th bundle for a lot of the lovely fabric lines in her shop. 
I'm not being paid to push it, I just think its a brilliant way to find out whether a bundle is right for what you want, £4-6 for a fat 16th of each bit.  And the 16ths will give you a fabulous scrap stash for cushions, charity blocks, zippy pouches, or whatever wee things you make in between quilts!


So what have I learnt so far?  

• Some people just have a knack for it.  But the more you do it the better you will get.  
• Love what you choose - if you don't love what you pick, you wont get quite so excited about working with the pick, you wont feel quite so motivated to keep working with it, and you wont feel quite as satisfied with what you make.
• Be brave and mix things up a bit.  Designer collections will work and look fab, but mixing things up make it more personal, and a little bit different!
• Having a "star" print and building around it with complimentary, more subtle prints works.  Having one colour theme and throwing in one or two bright, complimentary colours works.

But that doesn't feel much in the way of instruction ... help me out here,   how do you select your fabrics?  






PS.  I have actually done a little sewing in the last couple of weeks, honest... I'll share soon.  And also coming soon... block one in the Stained QAL...  remember to join the flickr group if you havent already!  *click here to go to Stained QAL on flickr*