Thursday, November 27, 2008

DNA Quilts

I haven't gotten much sewing done lately. Life! Sometimes there's just so . . . so . . . much of it!

All the projects I talked about in a previous post have come to naught. It's November 26th and I'm having to face the bleak fact that I probably don't have enough time to make Christmas dresses for the Wild Girls (a.k.a. my granddaughters). But if I save the fabric for next year, will I have enough of it to make dresses in the larger sizes they'll be wearing by then? Perhaps if I make them with short sleeves instead of long? (Would this style look good with short sleeves?) If I don't make dresses with this fabric, what on earth am I going to do with it?

To take my mind off the whole affair, I decided to clean out my email box which was cluttered with a gazillion letters. In one of them from 2007, was a link to Genome Quilts by Beverly St. Clair who has originated a way of encoding genetic information into her quilt designs. Though at first glance they may look like traditional scrap quilts, to those in the know they portray such things as the human red cone pigment gene which is involved in color vision. And I was charmed with the quilt which portrayed the Hepatitus C gene. (Her nephew worked on sequencing a piece of this gene, so she made him this quilt as a graduation present.) Be sure to click on the little button below this quilt so that you can see the double helix on the back.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

All Souls Day

I just thought I'd upload a picture of a Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) fabric that I have in my stash. It was put out by Alexander Henry a few years ago. I found it at a quilt show in one yard chunks and bought a couple. (I've also got it with a black background, but that doesn't show up so well on the computer screen.)

When I bought it I had no idea what I was going to use it for, and I still don't. It's one of those fabrics that quilters love to buy but hate to cut into. The skeletons are rather large, so cutting it into small pieces would destroy its charm.

Maybe I could make an apron out of it?