Hi! Can you imagine?! A whole year has passed since I---many of us---began Audrey's Quilty 365 Dots Project. My 366 Dots are finished.
The quote at the end of my go-along-with diary: "The days go so slow, but the years---they go too fast." This really sums up how I feel about the chronicled year, and about life in general. I suppose there is good and bad in everything.
For October I decided to use many of my Fall and Halloween fabrics.
I switched out the text squares for text prints that referred to Halloween or autumn.
As always within those parameters I chose each day's Dot to represent my experience of that day.
A trip to the dog park, a section of P2 finished.
A birthday.
Buying mums, and a trip to the pumpkin patch.
My tame feral kitties.
A magical full moon.
sewing, decorating...
migrating birds and butterflies, Halloween costume planning.
Halloween , of course.
And yes, I snuck ahead 5 days and finished where I began, on November 5. [so this block actually will be set side.]
I finally sat down and drew out the plan for the Dotties. There will be 19 rows of 20 Dots, beginning as I did last November. The sketch is wrong, I can't read my own writing, lol. But the premise should work out, with 14 extra spaces to fill in addition to the 366 Dots. [Leap Year.]
There will be a blank square between each month, with the extra blanks set at New Year's maybe. I had thought the spacer squares should be bold, tried these dots,
but I don't like the look and prefer to just use a subtle un-polka dotty text instead. Otherwise we'll be looking at those stupid squares instaed of all the Dotties.
There will be a narrow border. I hoarded this text in my fave dusty turquoise, only to find I don't like that either.
The border will be these pencils [as in writing a diary/ keeping a diary];
or maybe this ink spot Dot.
I bought two backings last summer. The seashell-beachy journal one was to go with with the aqua border, the very large text w/ the other choices. [2" + size words here.] Again, as I laid the choices out and also looking at the photos, I am 99% sure the large graphic text print will be the backing.
All of these text images and seasonal Dots will someday be clues that this quilt is a diary of my year.
I began the project with some goals---improve my needle turn applique skills. Focus on mindfulness daily. And I wanted to have a successful written diary or journal of my year. I love the idea of journaling but except for sketch journals, travel diaries, nature journals and years of shared journals with my mom, I have never managed to keep a journal going more than a few weeks.
Until now.
I wrote in my little pink journal pretty much every single evening, if only to say it had been a difficult and painful day. Or, hahaha, that it had rained or snowed, or Mo had a bath at the groomer van. My life is small, but it's mine.
As with years of nature journaling, in the end I preferred drawing to writing, much as I love to write and ramble on.
Will I hand quilt or have it machine quilted? That I do not know yet.
What do I wish I'd done differently?: I wish I'd been more careful cutting the backing squares, some are not square or wrong size, how did that happen? I wish I'd begun sewing the squares together each month. And I wish I had begun the project on the more logical January 1st slot.
Which brings me t my last thought, for now anyway: Will I miss the Dotties, would I do this again? Yes and yes. My current thought is to begin anew in January 2017, if after a lull I am still inspired. The 2017 quilt will be shades of blue/ black/ turquoise, utilizing my scraps of antique Japanese and American indigo fabrics if I can find them, plus batiks. And if indeed it is a quilt at all.
To see the other Dotty 365 projects, please visit our very generous and kind host's blog: Audrey at Quilty FolkAudrey has taken the time to set up Linkys each month for an entire year for our project. Thank you, Audrey!
I hope you enjoyed sharing my year.
love
lizzy
gone to the beach....
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