WOYWW #712: Hello 2023!

Although it seems ages since new year's eve, it's my first blog post this year, so happy new year, everyone. Here's what I've been up to in January so far: 

I finished my December Care Journal with some additional pages from the Ugly Art Club challenge. Here it is on my desk and a few of my favourite pages inside:

Currently I'm working on JJJ (Junk Journal January) in another journal but I'm only doing some selected prompts. This was the "barcode" prompt:

I've also finished my second quilt! This was made with the same strip piecing method as my first one, using Moda's scrap bags, just a bit bigger. I'm testing my boundaries size-wise and this is pretty much bordering the upper limits of what I can squeeze under a regular sewing machine while quilting. Maybe I can go just a little bigger!  I got into a bit of a pickle with the layers shifting during quilting, even with the walking foot, but got some good advice online about how to reduce the puckering. It turned out ok in the end! 

I've already started working on a new quilt, but it's a year-long project: it's a temperature quilt! It involves plotting the maximum and minimum temperatures for each day working with half square triangles. I assigned cool colours to the lower temps and warm colours to the higher temps. By the end of the year, I will have a very colourful quilt top! It's too early to show you the process, but I can show you the colours I'm using: 

Update (September 2023): I had to give up on this project. Although I continued logging the daily temps all the way through till the end of August, I came to the realisation that there hasn't been enough variation this year to make this project interesting, and I would have had to buy a bunch more fabric in the greens and yellows without using any of the lovely magentas. The only time I wouldn't have complained about the heat, we ended up with a cool summer! Perhaps I'll have another go next year.

I've been using lots of the coolest colours this week! It's been frosty most mornings! 

When I spotted this fox on the front lawn, I quickly checked that Oreo was in the house! Thank goodness, he was safely snoozing in the airing cupboard. He doesn't go out much in this cold. 

Happy #712!