Hearing bells...

Wedding bells, that is. My nephew, Michael is engaged and they are thinking this summer would be a nice time for a wedding. I couldn't decide on a quilt pattern, and then it occurred to me that I had about 90 extra yellow brick road blocks... he loves red and she likes vintage and blue... so I put them together and figure that'll do it. Not exactly a traditional wedding quilt, but more traditional than I usually do. Michael's mom is making them a more formal quilt, anyway, so this'll be more for every day. And I'm a more "everyday" kinda girl, anyway. And Sarah, you might notice that there are redheads out there who embrace their redness- Michael is a redhead, too. These fabrics are reproduction feedsack- they have a nice weight. I still have enough blocks to make my mom either a tablecloth or a bedquilt(queen)- her choice. Mom's house/barn tends to be a little dark and this quilt would certainly brighten things up a bit. Who knows what I was thinking when I made 159 yellow brick road blocks. I didn't leave myself a note on that one. I do believe that I was planning a king-size and then changed my mind. I can do that.

The picture of the rocking chair is just a little snapshot from my world. I like to sit in that old rocking chair, by my "fireplace" and flip through quilt magazines(thank you, Sarah) or do handsewing. This chair sits in the corner of my sewingroom- with it's back stategically placed against the messy shelves of projects that need to be done. The chair was a gift from a very dear friend and if you recall I have a thing for chairs. This one creaks abominably- but the babies loved it when they were sleepy and wanted to be rocked to sleep. It is a rather deep-pitched creaking and groaning. The "upholstery" is made from upholstery samples from the fabric store. You know how they come in little squares? Well, I sewed them all together and used it to recover the chair- thought it fitting for a quilting room and didn't cost me a penny.

I spent the biggest part of the night sitting in my chair, listening to the coyotes howl- my dad likes that sound, but it always gives me the willies. I decided that I am not a midnight quilter. I think it takes a little more strength than I have. I love to spend the sleepless night hours out in my sewing room, but I rarely ever do any quilting. I have gone through a small tub of wishlist quilts and made some decisions. I keep a tub of coordinated fabrics- assigned to a specific quilt pattern- or that I'd like to use together once I find the right pattern. Well, I decided that if I hadn't made that quilt top in the last three years, maybe the pattern wasn't right or the fabric combination wasn't right. I re-evaluated and put all but the feature fabric back in the hopper. (Sarah, do you remember that brown 1840's fabric we got at Needles? That I bought twice at Needles? It was on clearance that second time.) Sometimes I just love a fabric so much that I have a hard time cutting into it and using it- what if I don't get it right? I've spent awhile looking through quilt patterns. Nothing came of it. Then I noticed some embroidery floss peaking out from the disorganized and disheveled shelves... I am working with that now and that was a pleasant way to while away the night. No pressure. It got me to thinking about ladies in years past- I love any handiwork. How they would sit and stitch on something decorative or practical. There are tapestries and samplers. My greatgrandmother, Oe, used to sit in her bed and knit a sock before she turned in for the night. But last night I was thinking about samplers and needlework. There was a sampler by a little girl on the Antique Roadshow that had an estimated value of $150, 000. WOW. I used to think that some of the samplers which contained Bible verses tended to be kind of preachy. Now why would I have thought that? I guess because I figured the reason they were made was to teach others something- and that is what they do. But you know, I don't think that was the purpose. As I sat there and worked on my own piece, it occurred to me that I had chosen a verse that I really needed to learn- nothing that I felt I needed to teach anyone else. And I thought, "Why am I spending all of this time stitching in words when it would take me 5 minutes on the word processor. I could choose a perfectly even font. No discrepancy in the size of the letters. I could frame it, and ta-da, a perfectly nice sampler." But having the finished product isn't so much the point, is it? It reminds me of quilting. With each stitch I take, I think of the person that I'm making it for. And I'm sure this sounds weird beyond all reason (as usual) but it seems like the quilt, itself, is filled with those thoughts and prayers. It is for me, anyway. Handiwork isn't about making a thing. It is a gift- to others and to yourself. An expression of the heart.

Gotcha!!!!
Ah, just wanted to see if you were awake. Mr. Bones was in desperate need of neck vertabrae the last time he poked his head out the closet. So I just free-hand cut them, appliqued them on, and I think he looks ever so much more stable now, don't you? Won't be long and he'll be ready to entertain guests.

Sleeping like a baby...
Or not. Good morning! Another sleepless night and I'm wondering if there is anything worth saying. Probably not, but thought I'd give it a go. My mom noted that someone had made a comment on my blog at 4am so I wasn't the only insomniac among us- at which point I felt I had to say that the poster she was referring to lived in Cairo and I think the time zone difference would compensate for the early hour. Don't you just love those sweet baby lips, the way they get all squished over when they're sleeping?

So, here I am again, unable to sleep, and not feeling particularly bad about it. That's the key- not letting it get to you. Once you start panicking about how awful you'll feel the next day, you might as well kiss the idea of getting an hour or two of sleep, "Goodbye!" No, better to focus on the advantages... like when was the last time you had some peace and quiet while sitting at the keyboard? Of course, I do tend to jab at the keys which might rouse the lighter sleepers among the tribe here, but that's a risk I'll take. And tomorrow is Monday and I'm a real slow starter on Mondays, anyway.

Had a cool vision for a purple quilt come over me and now I wish there was a 24 hour fabric store- nobody would even miss me. I have it all worked out in my mind. Why purple? Couldn't say, but maybe it had something to do with the book I was reading to Abe and how Noah had a purple robe on. The mind works in mysterious ways- at least mine does. I'm envisioning a bedroom complete with paint- the exact shade of Hershey's chocolate- and a deep, dark purple quilt- with tan/gold would go very nicely. Ok, so my vision has a large number of flaws. First, I have lived in that bedroom for 6 years and there is still no joint compound- but, I figure that there is now drywall where there hadn't been for several years- you have not slept in a cold room until you have slept in a room with no insulation, no drywall- just clapboards between you and the howling winter winds on an Indiana prairie. We tried stapling plastic up, but it kept blowing down. Too much information? No, really, this is the life I want. Now, I've come up in the world and I have insulation and drywall. Still amazing how much air moves through those itty-bitty cracks in the wall- and around the floor where there isn't any trim boards, yet...Maybe joint compound and paint is aiming a bit high, huh? Well, I like brown and I want a blue ceiling- if I'm dreaming, I can paint it any color I like, right? Then the purple quilt and blue pillows and lots of brown and white thrown in. Bizarre, huh? Exactly. Maybe a Turkish bazaar.

Simple living, or simply living...

I love words, don't you? Sometimes I'll just make lists of words that seem to go together- or words that I like the sound of and try to use them all in one sentence. ("Ode to Mom"- I think that was in September, was one of those. Trepidation, and consternation are two words I wanted to use, but missed the opportunity.) Simple and simply seem very much the same word, and the difference is subtle, but they seem to significant to me.

I've had a very peaceful week. A simple week. I've refused to get caught up in the mental and emotional turmoil that seems to swirl around me these days. What purpose would it serve and how would that impact my quilting? Giggle. Now that we have ascertained what's important... I'm thinking that there is something to be said for the concept of endurance- not acceptance, necessarily, but enduring in the sense that what is beyond my control is... beyond my control. And I'm figuring that those things are some kind of disguised blessing- I'm just not of the mind to rip off the mask and see what's behind it. So...

I'm baking rolls using my "no recipe" recipe. I'll have to blog that one as I have been getting rave reviews. I've organized the laundry situation at my house- oh, joy! I can actually see the laundryroom floor! I've finished a couple quilt tops, quilted a couple more. Been chipping away at a couple more. I even bound the above quilt. Sarah hates that job, but apparently she is very proficient at it. Me, I figure that I am depreciating my quilts with each stitch I take!! Actually, they don't look too bad, but I doubt anyone would say, "My! What straight binding!" either. This quilt is for my cousin's son. His brother was our ring-bearer and in an effort to show impartiality, he is also getting a quilt. (That's my story, but the fact of the matter is, I just love her boys. I can't help myself. They are wonderful. I'm calling this quilt, "Alex the Great.") He is in his first year at college. I had meant to get this quilt done long before now, but I've had a cra... difficult autumn. It just has taken me awhile longer to finish than planned. I need to get a label made and attached, then it'll be on it's way. Better late than never- and he is the sweetest guy. Did I already mention that? Oh, and I washed the quilt and despite my concerns that some of those very dark greens were going to bleed all over the whites- nothing untoward happened. How relieved am I?! I did use my mom's advice and put some vinegar and salt in the washwater. Why? I have no idea. But it didn't bleed. If Alex has some sort of inexplicable craving for fish and chips, we'll blame it on the hillybilly method of setting dyes.

The kids humored me and went to see Pride and Prejudice. I couldn't help but smile when my husband said, "9 for Pride and Prejudice." My two oldest boys looking a little out of place. We decided that we liked it, but I must say that I preferred the A&E version- it was more... peaceful. The British are good at that. (Colin Firth was so good in the first one, but whoever the young man was in this version- he was wonderful, also. Just different.) I humored the kids and went to see Chicken Little with them. Now that wasn't so good, but the chicken was cute. We have a dollar theatre here in town and it is a good deal for big families. A very pleasant way to spend a cold winter evening. And it's 50 cents on Tuesdays, if you're really cheap. Evabeth is embarking on showbiz, herself. She had an interview with the director and producer for advertising at the medical center where she had some tests run. Apparently, the employees there found her appealing and mentioned it to them. I have put off meeting with them, but figured that Eva would find it fun and she could use a little fun these days... When she started quoting The Princess Bride, "Mawage. Mawege is what bwings us togethew... today." I thought they would fall out of their seats they were laughing so hard. Then all talk moved from a poster and billboard to a comercial on cable TV. They asked her if she would be nervous and she said, "Not a bit." That's Eva.

Now, I have broken into the bag containing Tonya's letters and I have started setting them. Unlike Sarah, I have been pleasantly surprised with how easily they are coming together. Of course, I am working with monster letters, not baby ones, so maybe that is the deciding factor. I have come to a corner and I can't see my way around an inset seam- oh the agony. But I am trying to calm myself by saying that it is only one. Not something I will have to repeat. I'm not feeling very calm about it, though. I just really, really want that silly "o" to straddle the line between the upper border and the side border. There's no help for it. It's simple, right? or simply right?

Cross-hatch Happy...

There are reasons you'll rarely find a cross-hatched quilt these days. But I felt that I could pull it off with this very old quilt top- for several reasons. For one thing, the owner of this quilt top located it in an old barn. I do believe that a family member pieced it, but I am not sure even she knows who that might have been. She is the sweetest, dearest lady and is not a quilter herself, so she isn't going to sniff and get her nose out of joint when each tiny purple block isn't perfectly dissected. Some people get a little touchy if you were to suggest that their blocks might not be perfectly square- even if you stress to them that it is often the weave of the fabric that causes this. Jeanie just couldn't care less. She gave me this quilt a few months ago, saying, "Oh honey, if you can't get to this for a couple years that's fine by me and you know I won't care a bit if it doesn't turn out nice." It was stained from time- and time in the barn. She had washed it, but there are still some dark spots, but I still think it's charming. The fabrics are linen and satin- the second factor which led me to cross-hatching. There wasn't high contrast between the lilac and the "white" so that in the places where each piece wasn't crossed perfectly, it wasn't going to scream, "I'm a failure!" The linen was very stable, and the satin... well, I worked around it and I think it turned out lovely. I'm not sure where one finds exact same shades of lilac in both satin and linen, but she managed. The white is very close to an Irish linen. The third reason I thought of cross-hatching was because the alternate blocks were such yummy empty spaces... You can't tell from the photo, but each corner square in the alternate blocks are appliqued. And these were no where near square, but we worked with 'em. The entire quilt was hand-pieced, so it made sense to applique the four small squares in each alternate block.

The last reason I choose to cross-hatch,
was that I was feeling particularly ornery and I wanted to. As good a reason as any, I suppose. I love how the quilting adds a completely new deminsion to this quilt- the batting she choose was high loft and while I would have chosen a cotton, the high-loft does look pretty. I like this quilt pattern- I might need to make one, myself. A 15 patch and then those alternate blocks with the little squares in the corners- not appliqued. Ahh... so many quilts, so little time.

Multi-tasking and me...
Someone once asked me how I could work on so many projects, simultaneously. The short answer is, "I can't." The long answer is, "I can't, not without lots of notes to myself." Here is a very bad picture of how I do some of the multi-tasking that I do. I had to chop half of it off and then change the color of it so that somebody won't be able to see what I am up to. As I work on one quilt, when I start to tire of it and it seems to be more of a chore than just fun, I know it is time to put that particular project away for a little while. Now I know that there are a whole lot of people out there who have a greater attention span than I do and they find some sort of sick satisfaction from finishing a project they just started only a month or so ago, but that's not me. I have found that when the time comes to walk away from a quilt- to start something new, that it is crucial to leave myself plenty of written reminders of what I am doing, where I am going and how I plan on getting there. I never get why post-it notes say that a person is a nerd. It just tells me the person is way too busy to assign important brain cells to menial tasks that a paper and pen can manage quite well. So, I compartmentalize the quilt pieces of one quilt into zippper bags with a little note as to what they are. Then all the zipper bags go into a larger zipper bag, with general instructions of what I have done and what I need to do to finish the quilt. This may sound dry, but I try to leave myself inspirational notes that will make me laugh later, and encourage me to finish this project. OK, that may sound nerdy, and it is. This one says something like, "I have all the units made in order to make all 130 blocks for this quilt. What was I thinking?? But hey! I'm halfway there!" On the wall over my work counter, I keep a post-it note of quilt projects I am working on, so when I go into the quilting room- with my cup of tea, I spend a few minutes looking over the list, deciding what I shall work on that day- or I start something new. I keep a list of finished tops on one side- for days when I feel like quilting. Most days I do some of both. I can't begin to say how lovely it is to have a space dedicated just for sewing. I don't have to pack everything up anymore so that we can sit down for supper. Much nicer this way. As I finish quilts tops they move to the quilting side of the counter. I used to re-arrange all the notes to fill in the gap left by the finished quilt, but I find these spaces indicate a project accomplished, and that's a lot of fun to see.

Coal mine quilt top done...

See? I do finish something, sometimes. Kinda. Still needs to be quilted, but the top is done. Surely that counts for something. This has to be the fastest- beginning to end- quilt I have ever done. Usually, I spend a good bit of time ruminating on what colors I'll use, then what pattern, then what size... none of that happened with this one. I just decided one afternoon that I was going to make a coal mine memorial quilt for the lost miners in Sago and that it was going to be a black and white/grey log cabin with a big patch of sky for the middle square. I got in my Jeep and went directly to the store where I bought all of the fabric at one time, I came home and had it cut out the next day and ta-da! There it is. Aside from the little hicccup where I had made 35 blocks originally when in, actuallity, I needed 36, the whole thing went together very smoothly. I like it. I really like it. If you stand back from it, the blue blocks look a little bit like a window pane. Go ahead, cross your eyes, you'll see it. It is a nice size. 72" square. From this point, I'm not sure what I'll do with it. That's a thought for another day.

Well, it's ladies' game night, here. Every month I say I'm not going to go, and yet, I almost always end up going. Darilyn would understand. I just want to stay home and quilt and watch a movie with my baby- maybe pop some popcorn and read a good book. Aren't I dull? But no, duty calls and I must try harder to be a good friend so I'll go. Maybe I'll take my camara and it'll be like you're all going, too! We eat and play cards until about midnight. It is a lot of fun. Keep telling myself that so I'll get it in gear and take that shower, make the enchiladas and hey! cinnamon rolls and go out into the cold to HAVE FUN. woo-hoo. Are you convinced yet, 'cause I ain't.