How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
~Annie Dillard
Quilting
This year DH and I are spending our days in home repairs. Last year was kitchen organization. The results are relaxing as I can quickly put my hands on tools. A few more things may be recycled there. Our church sets up apartments for formerly homeless people. When they are ready to transition to their own housing, they take all the furnishings. We are constantly on the lookout for good used items and purchase other things.
This year the roof started the ball rolling; it has become an avalanche. With so many people in and out of the house, pounding all day, thinking is hard. It's better to continue the theme by clearing out the closets and shelves. I've done a bit of my clothes closet but prefer to work through the storage and quilting areas. On a shelf I found not one, but two boxes. One contains sets of triangular units; the other is simple QSTs. Most are leftovers from my previous Ocean Waves quilts but a few were a start on {yet another} OW for my daughter. Hard to believe some have been "resting" fifteen years. This time I am determined to use them up. All of them. There are certainly enough for two quilts: one for DH and the other for DD. There will still be leftovers and they will make gifts for the apartments.
Here's my basic Ocean Waves unit(s): one light and one dark. Not squares at all. Which doesn't bother me because no method of making OW blocks is trimmable. You have to sew them accurately from the beginning.
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| My basic Ocean Waves units |
I've always loved this pattern even though there aren't different ways to set the blocks. Why have they languished in the shadows so long? To try to spark my interest I {finally} read Bonnie Hunter's instructions... and realized why she creates such beautiful mystery quilts. She easily divides her quilts into many different blocks. She "sees" multiple blocks. Her basic triangle is a HST.
Until I reviewed my previous posts, I didn't remember exactly how I made my version but it was nothing like Bonnie's. {No criticism; just interesting how our eyes work.} Since my basic triangle is a QST, right away her method won't work with my scraps because all the edges would be bias.
Here's how the two triangle units create an Ocean Waves block: six light units and six dark units. Oh, boy. My fifteen year older eyes and hands are grateful these triangles are already cut and mostly sewn.
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| Ocean Waves block layout |
I know I have some solid yardage squirreled away. Why I ever purchased 4-6 yards of anything is unknown but it will be useful making the centers.
Enjoy the day,
Ann
Reading
Over several years {the hundred Sundays} Stella Levi related her family history to author Michael Frank. For nearly five hundred years the Jewish community of Rhodes thrived along Christians and Muslims after the Spanish diaspora. Even though Italy gained control of the island in 1912, they mostly modernized living standards and education. However; in mid-1944 the Germans rounded up the 1700 Jews of Rhodes and sent them to Auschwitz where most were murdered on arrival.
The details of life on Rhodes in the years between the wars are interesting. Don't you wish we could travel back in time instead of merely through place?