Mid-February Friday night and a Camel

During most winters this would be another weekend buried under snow. We would be lusting after sunshine, envying friends who managed a tropical vacation and dragging tired boots, scarves and mittens everywhere. Ahh, but here in early 2012 the thermometer keeps hugging the 0 C mark. Not quite winter enough for snow shoes or X-country skis but too much winter for sitting out in the sunshine at lunchtime.

I have been finishing lots of little projects, like pillows and PlayBook, Kindle + Kobo covers. And I made a new pilllow for my Camel.   Why do I have a Camel and why does it need a pillow? Excellent question....

The Camel belonged to my Aunt and Uncle, gifted to me by my special big brother/cousin because he knew how much I loved it.  Uncle brought it home from Gaza while he  was peacekeeping with the Canadian  Armed Forces in the 60's.   If you looked at it closely you would see that it is actually all cleverly hinged together and could fold nearly flat (sort of).

His leather saddle cushion was filled with felt and straw.  It looked very tired and sad.  A washing did not help and fluffing the stuffing resulted in some serious disintegration.  I decided that the most respectful option would be to create a new one.  Decision making: 1- find similar fabric to the original cushion and duplicate it, 2- find fabric that matched my loving room decor, 3- create a pieced quilt block as the cushion top 4- play with the Egyptian theme, 5- do nothing .

I had some interesting Egyptian prints aging in my stash  (Aging must be a requirement for stash do that the fabric becomes as wonderful as fine wine).  Since this has been such a pleasantly mild winter I have been able to tackle these smaller projects as I think of them and still work away on the larger quilt
projects; this should be a great quilty-sewing year.

So here is my Camel with a new cushion. So making pillows, post cards, gifts and covers are not all that winter weekends are for,  I still can baste the Red & Purple quilt and even pull out the fabric purchased last winter to make curtains.  This mild winter is helping me to be very productive, and it is only the middle of February, and a Friday night starting a long weekend.

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