This and that

I'm off again for another busy day. On Wednesdays I leave home before 9:00 and don't get back until after 6:00. That's not too bad except that Choco gets left outside all day without a noontime walk. Choco hates Wednesdays!

I was reminded yesterday that the Noah's Ark block of the month series had moved on to a new block and I was still working on June's. I found a few minutes in the evening and finished it up. It needs a bit more color I think. Someone had the kangaroos holding flowers which was cute so I might add a few more flowers.

Thank you for the comments on the 365 Challenge. I didn't do such a good job of explaining what all the preparation was for this quilt, did I? I'm not sure where I first heard about it but Leanne offered the first challenge and she has directions posted on her website. A whole Yahoo group was made I think, but I never joined that and have just plodded along by myself. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I'm sure it wasn't me, but someone somewhere suggested making a smaller quilt than the one that Leanne was suggesting (her blocks are larger) and that caught my eye too and a smaller version evolved for me.

The strips (and therefore the blocks) are 3 1/2 inches wide rather than the measurements Leanne gives. I made three sets of blocks,
3 1/2 " by 3 1/2",
3 1/2" by 4 1/2" and
3 1/2" by 5 1/2".

I cut 160 of the 3 1/2" blocks, 160 of the 4 1/2" blocks and 48 of the 5 1/2" blocks. Let's see... Added together that should make 368 blocks.

I divided the three sets of blocks into 16 piles with 10 blocks of 3 1/2", 10 blocks of 4 1/2" and 3 blocks of 5 1/2". That makes 23 blocks in each pile and those piles went into zip lock bags.

That was the preparation part.

Each week I ironed the blocks on freezer paper and wrote the entries with a Pigma pen. I think a wider tip is better because sometimes the finer tip would pull the fabric away from the freezer paper and a simple entry no longer than a couple of sentences long would take me 15 minutes to write!

I'm not much of an artist so I had a terrible time adding little drawings but I did trace over some cute clip art on an old calendar of mine and then color the drawings in with regular crayons and heat set them. I did that only for the month titles but here again, a little more color.

The challenge is keeping up with daily entries which is much more difficult than you might think even if you are a person who likes journaling.

Someone asked me what I'm going to do with this quilt as I don't have a bed and it is too large for a wall. I have no idea. Then why did you make it, my friend asked. I guess the answer is that somewhere generations down the line my great-great-granddaughter or someone will be fascinated by the year in the life of a quilter living in Japan. (I hope.)