Hi All,

Finally Feb 2 & I’ve finished cutting out January. Usually January is very slow for me but this year was definitely the exception. Rowan & I hit the road & drove to Melbourne house hunting, dh joined us the following week & we thought we’d found our dream house. However the building inspection gave us a good idea it was more likely to be a nightmare house. My squares show the little blue house we found, then a few days later a brown square to represent the re-stumping required & the termites.

There are a few days relating to the Rowan’s return to school  & his trip to hospital after a bad fall at school hurting his head, hand & both legs. Luckily he is fine & won’t be attempting to jump any more brick walls.

The little black dog is our Spoodle Molly celebrating her 1st birthday.

This past week we’ve been very busy starting to get the house set up to put on the market as soon as we find another house. This is a huge job because we are also trying to get rid of as much excess stuff as possible. We are all hoarders & we still have a lot of ds#1 & dd’s stuff stored here too. Hopefully this will all be done over the next couple of weeks & I might get some time to do some sewing rather than just move all my craft stash around!!

Cheers, Jan

Well it all starts here today!!

A BOD?? A block of the day, but don’t panic you only have to cut a piece of fabric a day, not piece a block. 🙂

I heard about ‘Calendar Quilts’ a few years ago & immediately had a picture in my mind of what they would look like. I went surfing & found they were nothing like I pictured so I started one the way I pictured it.

Well like a lot of things in my life, it all petered out after a few months. The following year I picked up where I left off & again failed. Not surprising as I was then thrown into the worst 18 months of my life, where everything ground to a halt. Now things back on track I feel I’m back in control & this year I’m going to make my calendar quilt. 🙂

So enough of the waffling. Here’s the idea.  You need to cut a piece of fabric to represent every single day of the year. It pays to have a good stash of novelty/conversation prints to use, you also need to have a diary to document what each block represents & keep the diary to be passed on with the quilt. This means you might just write a comment each day then sit down once a week & cut 7 fabric for the previous 7 days. I wouldn’t recommend leaving it longer than 7 days because it all starts to feel a bit too hard to catch up. At the end of each month you can join up your month of fabrics & embroider the name of the month across the top or bottom.

This is a fun way to document a year of your life & the diary means that future generations can ‘read’ your quilt & know what Mum/Grandma was doing.

It’s a good idea to draw up each month on interfacing then you can pin each day in place.

Now having said this there are many different styles of Calendar quilts & your vision might be entirely different to mine. I know some people cut strips of fabric & actually sew a new strip on each day.  I’ve added a link to a great blog where a group of quilters have posted details of their progress. One of these styles may be the one for you. The idea of this blog is for us to motivate each other to continue on this journey. The style we choose to use is our own choice, though you are very welcome to use the style I ‘pictured.’

http://calendarquiltchallenge.blogspot.com/

I believe Pat Sloane, an American quilter, had the original  idea for a  ‘calendar quilt’.

Here’s a pic of a block I started in 2006. The 1st was a Sunday so it starts on the first square. This year’s January will start on the sixth square, Friday.’

I will change a few things on this year’s quilt, I won’t use white for the spare squares I think it looks too bland & I will embroidery the month at the top. These squares were 2 1/2″ cut, I’m toying with the idea of cutting 3″ squares this time.  Think about how big you want your finished quilt to be when you decide how big to cut your fabrics.

Don’t think your life has to full of excitement to make one of these. The simplest thing might be the thing that stands out in your day, like a beautiful blue sky or a pretty butterfly you see in your garden. It does make you sit & think about your day whereas often days slide by without much thought. I know that’s been true for me.

So if you would like to be an ‘author’ on this blog you will need to register with wordpress then email me & I will send you an invite to join the group. This is a first for me so I’m hoping it will be easy. 🙂