A Colorful Thread: March 2022
Weaving together my life as a maker and other spheres of life.
Best of Stitched in Color {March}
On My Mind
Experimenting:: with ideas for my next Pas de Deux quilt. I plan to begin afresh next week, along with everyone else who is starting round 2 of Pas de Deux in April! Should I start with a favorite fabric to set the color palette? I thought I had decided to use a limited color palette of 2-3 main colors for the entire quilt, but a blended rainbow like @quiltkat is making is also enticing. Hmm. For sure I’m planning to minimize the boundaries between the patchwork groups in order to create a softer visual flow.
Pas de Deux membership is on sale now through Sunday! It’s the ideal time to take the leap and sew-along with me.
Reading:: I recently finished The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by Schwab. I picked this audio book on a whim, just looking for something immediately available to stream from my library. It surprised me. If you like historical fiction, you might like this novel which begins long ago in France. There’s a bit of fantasy involved, which allows the story line to twist in unique ways.
Celebrating:: this gorgeous rendition of Pas de Deux by Melissa @AbleMissDesigns. Melissa’s patchwork first caught my eye in January, and each time she adds to her quilt, it gets better and better. Her choices in color and value placement are thoughtful, but the palette itself is quite simple. Melissa is using the same colors throughout the quilt, just in different proportions: pinks, teals and blues. It strikes me as a very doable approach, and one you could work out as you go rather than planning in advance!
Anticipating:: a shopping trip with my husband next weekend. Brandon and I have made plans to spend a Saturday traveling to nearby Deventer and Zutphen. Both cities seem to have a collection of nice second hand shops. These are consignment clothing shops, with curated collections and tasteful presentation.
We’re looking for clothes to wear at court in America this June, and would rather not spend a fortune. Our court case is slated to be two weeks long, so although we will repeat our outfits, it’s no small amount of “business casual” clothing to acquire. We’ve made a good start locally and using the Vinted app, but it’s time to extend our reach a little farther. Fingers crossed we find a few nice jackets that fit Brandon!
This afternoon Brandon and I are heading by train to Utrecht, but this trip is for nothing so fun. Well, unless you like shopping for home heating systems? The skyrocketing price of energie (gas and electricity) is making us rethink investing in our home’s energy efficiency. We already invested in wall insulation and new windows last year. This year we are looking at roof insulation, a hybrid heat pump and solar panels for our home, as a way of drastically reducing our energy consumption. Fortunately there are subsides and advantageous loans in The Netherlands to help with this. We will also likely do some roof insulation ourselves, as possible. It will be a few months of gathering information and quotes, and then hopefully we’ll make some good decisions.
Have a good day, friends!