My Brilliant Friend

Journal

Author: Ferrante, Elena

This was a recommend from a group I follow on Facebook. I didn’t realize that it was the first in a series of four.

The story follows two friends, Elena and Lila, from the early 1950’s before they started school until Lila’s marriage at age 16. They grew up in a poor neighbourhood in Naples and seldom left it. While Elena carried on her studies into high school,Lila was forced to end her schooling at Grade 5 because her family could not afford the books. It is an interesting story and there are hints at what is to come in their lives but I won’t bother reading the rest of the series.

Despite the same name as the author, I couldn’t find anything that said the book was a memoir.

Goodreads Rating: * * *

Rylan

Quilting

This was the December project that I worked on with Stacia and Deloise. They were both finishing up the book, while I still have three more projects to go.

Since it was December I purposely picked Christmas fabrics; the stars on the edges seemed to beg for Christmas fabrics. Things were going well and I had the centre finished (from scraps of Christmas fabrics) when I noticed that the measurements were off. If the centre wasn’t the right size those stars weren’t going to work on the border. I took the centre apart and was able to trim down the four-patches and put everything back together again and make it the right size.

The stars in the pattern were done with templates. After a couple of tries I realized I wasn’t ever going to get the stars right so I made my own paper-pieced pattern. It took a few tries to perfect the pattern but I finally got it right. I worried that I would run out of the fabrics I picked for the stars but, in the end, I had lots.

I used my new-to-me quilting method of free style curved lines in the centre and a cross hatch on the stars.

I debated giving this one away but with all the work I put into it I decided to keep it for myself.

Lucia, Olivia, and Sophie

Quilting

These are the projects I worked on at Panorama when Stacia, Deloise and I were together for a week of sewing. That week of sewing turned into only about three days of sewing for me as I was ill and everything I touched seemed to be a disaster.

The tops were done before I left Panorama but I had no desire to quilt them. When I was quilting other projects for Christmas I decided it was time to at least get them sandwiched. And, once they were sandwiched, it was relatively easy to get them quilted as they are small.

All these projects are from the book Little Handfuls of Scraps by Edyta Sitar.

Lucia
Olivia
Sophie