Showing posts with label swoon block. Show all posts
Showing posts with label swoon block. Show all posts

Monday, September 7, 2015

Something for me.


This may sound like a funny story, but recently the church decided to replace all the old chairs with new ones.

Yes, the old ones were showing wear after about 30 years of use and they were a bit heavy for stacking and putting away.

Well, the new chairs came. They are certainly prettier and much lighter and stack nicely. The seat is also much larger and the choir is happy with the change ... all except me.

Now why is it that a person of my size and degree of padding can not sit for more than ten minutes in one of those chairs? I might blame my ADHD, but I never had a problem with the old chairs.  On the new ones the seat is not flat but is raised toward the front edge and the pressure on the lower side of my upper legs is so painful. I tried sitting on the front edge and sitting sideways but to tell the truth, standing or sitting on the floor would be better.

Last week I brought a small pillow and that helps a bit so I decided to make a pillow to leave on my choir chair.

Several times I have been attracted to "Swoon" blocks I have seen on other blogs. I made a sketch a few years ago in my graph-paper notebook and I decided to draft that pattern to fit a 16 inch pillow I have on hand that could be put to that purpose.

I dug out some musical prints and cut them up for take-along work. Above is what I came up with. The number on my choir robe and music is 21. It is kind of a joke because no one else minds which piece of music they get, but I have been singing these pieces for many years and have highlighted the tenor part and made notes where I need to pay extra attention. The other three parts may not care because the sopranos and altos are always written in the treble clef, and the bases always get the bass clef, but the tenors are forced to jump from one to the other at the convenience of the publisher... and often at very inconvenient parts when singing. Often when music is passed out, I begin calling out to see if anyone has #21 and it gets a lot of laughter. I am thinking I might applique or quilt a big 21 in the center of the cover. Good idea?

I brought three prints down to decide the outer light patches and this one is what my husband thought worked best. He usually doesn't pay much attention to what I am making but liked this fabric best when I told him I couldn't decide. I have another black music print with a keyboard and scattering of white notes that I plan to put on the under side of the cover, once I quilt the top. I am thinking of quilting this a quarter inch on each side of the seam line. The center square is four inches square and the largest piece. Should I applique the 21 or quilt it in ... well, even if I applique it, I would quilt around the edge.

I cut the templates out of green construction paper because I only planned to use them once but now that I see how fun it was to put this block together ... I might have to save them. A whole quilt of 16 inch blocks would go together much faster than all those one-inch pieces I just spent over a year on!