February

February means heat and back to work - neither of which are conducive to creativity. Plus a family wedding thrown in the mix, it's been a busy few weeks. I took the pre-wedding photos and will not be giving up my day job any time soon.

 The wedding flowers were beautiful - apparently the florist had books of different shades of pink roses you can choose from - imagine that. The roses were the most delicate pink, darker around the edges.

Today I finished all the blocks I had cut - 56 altogether. So I laid them out and am pleased with the effect. You can see darker patches where I have made myself use more mid-tone fabrics. I think it will make a great bed quilt and would like it to be quite large so am going to have to do a whole lot more cutting. Oh dear.

And to top it all off it's tomato season! I've have had to halt all other activities twice now to  cook up huge woks full of tomatos - home grown tomatos are so sweet. Delicious with lots of basil.

Horrors

I found another kiwi quilters blog with a similiar name - twenty cent mixture - so I decided to change the name of my blog - she's been doing it longer than me. Spooling relates to both quilt making, photography - remember when we had film on spools? - and life in general. Mine always feels as if it's unspooling. So anyway, change is good, I might just change the name regularly.

Summer Rain

Today it absolutely rained cats and dogs, on and off all day. Most unusual for January but hey I won't have to water the garden for a few days!
A good day for sewing.  I have already found that many of my fabrics are mid-tones and I am struggling to find enough darks and lights to go with them. Have been for one foray to the quilt shops to see what I could find. Colour value range is now from quite dark to very light but as long as you are careful about how you combine the values, it seems to work.

The value range certainly exists in my morning latte.

I have started!

 

 Well I've made a stack of blocks. Went down to the naki for a few days to stay with Paula so that stopped production for a while. It is very beautiful in Taranaki. I would so love to live by the beach.

 

 

 

 

Latte

I thought "the time to begin a new quilt is upon me!" But where to begin?
With something relatively simple I think. I have been collecting coffee coloured fabrics for the last year or so with no specific quilt in mind. Began searching for a simple yet classic block to best showcase the delicious latte colours. Surfing the blogs I happened upon the double hour glass block. Horrors! it is not in my bible of blocks - Jinny Beyers Blocks and Borders. So I had to get the graph paper out and do some maths! My brain is a bit rusty, it has been a few years, but did work out the template free cutting for a 7" block. Sorting into lights and darks was challenging as many of the fabrics are mid-tones. But this should be the feature of the quilt - some fabrics will be used as both light and dark.

2010

Well I have decided to turn this much unused blog into a quilting blog as part of my 2010 New Year's Resolution to 'get back' into quilting to some degree at least. I may make it a blog about all creative output - my photography as well although that is quite well documented on flickr. We will see where the year takes us.
I would like to make contact with other quilters, who maybe also are looking for direction/motivation/inspiration in their quilting. Life has just got in the way over the last few years and it's time to begin a new chapter, a new ramble.

Sheryl's Ramblings

I have moved from my Sherylnzd blog to this new Sheryl Madigan version.
Feels a bit more me.
So I will ramble on from here!