Incoming: a new baby and a dancer with too many shoes

My former neighbor and valued dear friend Cristina is having her second baby boy.  At her request I used the same palette for this quilt as I did for her son Enzo.  See it here.   But I made too many bits for the quilt.  These bits became the best diaper bag.  What a joy to give these to here.  Even Enzo noticed that this new quilt bears a resemblance to his!  A remarkable boy…

And the other big finish this month is for my great niece Eloise.  Like her mom, Elo dances. And she has several shoes she carries.  So this bag was made to carry multiple sets of shoes and a water bottle.  This is the Aragon bag by Sew Sweetness.  One side ahas a curvy pocket.  The other side has a zip compartment.  The whole bag ones wide with a purse zipper.  And the inside feature two elastic pockets and another zip compartment. I could market this as a senior citizen special because it has so many different little places to put things.  Elo chose this fabric, and this bag will be for her first double digit birthday in January.

And last but certainly not least is my evening hand quilting project. I love this quilt.  I love my stitching.  

I’m almost at the end and sad to have this completed.  This might be my new dining room wall hanging! 

And of course little zip purses using leftover bits.  Most of them have been gifted.  After all, it is the season! 
 

                         

                         Finally, a new special project has begun.  More about this later! 

Changing gears again - a finish, a start, and the germ of an idea

At the risk of sounding dorkier than I usually do, this quilt has been a joy to work on.  AGF has free patterns, and this one is Pacific.  And look - I still have some Seth Apter fabrics!  I love these colors, and I loved hand quilting it.  But it’s time to move on.  There has been a huge pile of gorgeous greens and blues fabrics just begging for some interesting design.  And I’ve decided to repeat the Glam Clam pattern.  It’s been pin basted, and it has now been my new evening companion for the past few days.  The temperatures have recently dropped - we’re in winter for sure.  Sitting with this quilt on my lap as I stitch is a perfect way to spending chilly evening.

   

After mailing off 21 purses (see below) I let myself play with scraps and a little zip pouch pattern from The Pink Door.  These are little curvy clutches.  One will be for the December good swap.  The rest - well, it is December!

The next quilt project is a joyful one.  My little friend (jeez, Cristina is 34 - I should find a better descriptor for her…) is pregnant with her second child, another boy.  I made Enzo a pretty sweet baby quilt and am using the same color palette of blues and greens (how perfect - I have just the fabrics) for the new baby.  Cristina likes when I go off script with my quilting choices.  She likes wonk and random, but both those words make me twitch a bit.  I found this pattern and am adapting it.  Today is the day I  will play around with the “blocks” I’ve made from the strips below.  

And of course Sew Powerful purses.  I was delighted to get these three made and mailed off with these other 18.  Time to start a new batch.  This Zambian ministry is now over 10 years old and has spread to Livingston in addition to the capital city of Lusaka. My political distress over the November election results grows with each day’s news as Trump begins his second presidency on a revenge tour.  Look at the appointments he’s making.  The system of checks and balances is out of whack and getting whackier by the hour.  I sincerely hope in 4 years my conservative brother can say to me, “See? He was good for our country and values.”  But we have been on the road before.  It’s impossible for me to give this convicted buffoon a second chance.  And I am appalled at those who voted this narcissist into office.  So, I will sew.  And sew.  And sew.  And then I’ll sew some more. 

Projects in Process

 

Why do I think I need an even number of purses to mail to Sew Powerful?  I have 18 completed and think I need two more before mailing.  But I’ve been distracted by the lure of other projects.  Evenings I’ve been hand quilting a project that I am still so in love with.  I’m may be  half way done and am enjoying every stitch.

My never-ending supply of scraps and UFO’s call to me loudly.  At the beginning of the pandemic I took an on-line workshop with the revered and lovely Carol Lyles Shaw(who sad.y is no more ). And it was terrific.  She had one camera above her work surface and one on her, and she toggled back and forth seamlessly.  The topic of this workshop was scraps and a creative way to use them.  Here’s what I created: 

My plan was to make more of these large blocks (15” x 24” ish).   But after 4 years it’s clear that that’s not happening.  So, what to do with these?  Then I remembered the scrap community project guild mate Jane Shapiro led us in.  I liked it so much that I made a quilt using her technique.  This quilt was gifted to my cataract doctor (John had a horrible complication with one of his surgeries, and I was thrilled all worked out for me.)  and I wondered whether this pattern might lend itself to these big squares - and some random black and white blocks.

After a bit of sewing and finagling and looking for a background fabric, here’s what I’ve come up with. I have  a total of 48 blocks, 5 pairs of orange, 5 pairs of teal, 5 pairs of purple, five pairs of browns, and 4 pairs of blacks. Each block is 12.5” square.  This means the quilt of 48 blocks would be 72” x 96”.  

And here’s how I’ve packed it away until I’m ready to join the blocks together.

Look at my note to myself.  I can make more blacks.  Do I want a quilt that is 84” x 84”?  I need one more block.  What if I want the quilt 84” x 96”?  Then I need to make 8 more.  Next decision is layout.  Here is something different: 

But while I’m deciding how to lay out these blocks and finish this quilt top, I’m itching to start a Glam Clam using a pile of blues and greens I’ve been accumulating. I spent one day with my quilt guild at last weekend’s retreat.  All I accomplished there was cutting the clams.  Today I started to lay the quilt out.  Here’s what I have so far. 

Construction of this quilt is odd.  One must work row by row, starting with the top row.  Each new clam is inserted and sewn to the body.  Starting this quilt is easy, but it gets cumbersome as you work your way towards the bottom of the quilt.  But my hands are happy piecing curves.  We’re heading to Atlanta to visit Julie for a long weekend and to see foliage in Kentucky and Tennessee.  I can’t take the quilt I’m in love with because it’s too heavy and Atlanta is still pretty hot.  So this hand-piecing will go with me.  Perhaps when we return I can finish those two remaining Sew Powerful purses and get them all mailed! 

Hudson River Cruise - a Quilting Diversion

Our Fall Foliage Hudson River cruise was pretty terrific.  We did indeed hit peak color on a lovely small ship with mostly nice people.  John’s smile pretty much says it all.

                                This is an example of what we saw daily.

                   An early morning fog gave this, the Rip Van Winkle Bridge, an eerie look. 

                        The early morning mist also gave this grove of trees an eerie 3-d look.  

Here’s John on the Rip Van Winkle Bridge.  This part of the country takes Washington Irving quite seriously - weather vanes, signage, and even renaming a NY hamlet Sleepy Hollow.  The next few pictures demonstrate this!  Look at the bridge picture below.  That’s the same bridge in the fog.  Notice that in the middle of the bridge, tresses go down instead of up.  That severe change is akin to what Rip Van Winkel experienced after his 20-year sleep - the world seemed upside down to him! 

Two highlights of this trip were our visit to West Point and to the Franklin D Roosevelt Museum and Library.  I took no pictures at West Point, but what a place!  During our tour a grandson in uniform came out to greet his grandparents!  Our tour ended with the museum exhibit "A Day in the Life of a Cadet."  Very impressive.  I would have lasted perhaps 20 minutes at this institution.  So much talk about honor and commitment made me wonder how this institution views our current presidential candidates. Our best view of West Point came days later as we sailed back into Manhattan.  

The whole FDR experience was pretty special too.  Here I am with my new friend.  We didn't have enough time to go through the entire museum - we got as far as 1942.  But as with all other presidential museums we've been to, the exhibits are excellent.  So much food for thought.  Below are busts of FDR and Churchill .  What I thought was graffiti are actually sculptures from remnants of the Berlin Wall.  Read the photo below.

Below is a glorious path leading from the main road to the house where FDR was born in - it was his favorite place in the world and so close to the Hudson.  Our guide told us that he would regularly "walk" this path, testing his physical capabilities. 

The lobby of the museum and library has this mosaic that is probably the size of a king-size quilt and provides a map of all we would see. 

 Our goal with this river cruise was seeing fall foliage.  And we so happily met this goal in style.  We were gone just long enough for the callous I keep on the middle finger of my right hand (the one I keep under the quilt) to soften.  

Next up?  A drive to Atlanta right after the election.  And a river cruise on the Ohio from Pittsburgh to Louisville.  We leave July 4! 

Finally a word about the election.  Oh, never mind...

75th Birthday Gratitude and What Makes Me Happy

Today I am 75.  This morning’s 4 mile walk was great. The weather is gorgeous - we’re heading into my favorite time of the year.  Next week we’re taking a river cruise out of NYC up the Hudson River.  And I live in a neighborhood where people have money to decorate in style!  Note:  These things that make me happy are listed below but not necessarily in order of importance.  

Newish guild member Janette wound up with a lot of cork fabric and has shared it. Cork is expensive.  I like it but don't often buy it.  When we were in Portugal (home of cork) I asked our tour operator and also our driver if we could stop at a cork factory.  They both said no.  But here comes Janette with these lovely bolts!  She came over and we played cork one day.  But there is so much left. We have a guild retreat in early November - I'm planning on taking cork, perhaps even already cut out for pencil cases, like the one in navy to the left.

Below is a picture of my beloved working away at the dining room table.  Not only does John make me happy, this whole room does too!  

Making purses for Sew Powerful and their menstrual hygiene education program makes me incredibly happy.  I love using quilt leftovers for these purses as well as some terrific feature fabrics.  I have 19 here that I'm about to ship.  I have three more started on my design wall and hope to add those to this shipment.

Sometimes I am happiest when I am planning quilts.  Look at this pile below.  Lots of greens and teals and perhaps some blues.  The current plan is to cut out shells for a glam clam design.  I say current plan because it is a lot of fiddly work.  I find it hard to use a rotary cutter for these pieces, and also hand piecing works best for me for these kinds of curves.  I made one once before and loved it.  One of my Quilty friends has it in her house.  

Of course I love my studio - that's a given.  But what I really love are my work tables.  They are on casters so I can reconfigure the room at whim.  And the storage under the tables helps me keep things organized and within reach.  Each table is 35" x 60".  I paid a small fortune to have them deconstructed from the LaGrange studio where they were built and then rebuilt here - worth every penny.  

I am fully aware of how geeky what I'm about to say next is:  new purse/bag patterns make me very happy.  VERY HAPPY.  This pattern is Bohemian Carpet Bag by Sew Liberated.  There is a metal frame that allows the bag to open completely.  See the second picture.  While I love the grey one, I especially love the other two, both made with fabrics by Seth Apter.  With the grey and the greenish one, I used cork for the corner parts.  With the grey one, I used a suede-ish sort of fabric for the straps.  The beauty of the pattern is that it's simple.  The hardest part of all these of these projects was taking apart the metal frame and then reinserting the pins that hold the frame together.  A pair of pliers and a hammer were needed.  And I love the results!

I could go on and on about what's making me happy.  What I have here is not the entirety.  But its a start.  This quilt below has made me very happy and it still does every night as I hand-quilt it.  I've been at this one for about a month and will happily spend another month of 6 weeks to finish it.  Who is it for? I don't know.  Someone at some point will claim it.

Life is a mystery.  My brother Doug didn't make his 60th birthday.  And here I am 75, and John 85.  Today, right now, I am happy and healthy and productive.  And so thankful. 

Ch-ch-ch-changes…

 

                  Scraps! Outliving my stash! What was I thinking? A color shift!

I do have so many scraps.  And they get to me.  I’ve got to use them.  The above quilt?  All leftovers from some precut charm packs   The sashing is leftover from a quilt backing.  There’s greys and beiges.  The on point setting makes it kind of interesting.  It’s 60” x 72.”  Pin basted and reading for quilting.  The back is all leftover neutral odd bits.

This is a scrap quilt from leftover Seth Apter fabrics.  I’m about to finish hand quilting it.  And I feel good about using all these leftover small bits.  

This cartoon has nothing to do with anything,  except it by my favorite cartoonist, Roz Chast.  And it does sum up how I feel about summer.  Heading into the fall makes me so happy.  

As evidenced by my gravitation to Seth Apter fabrics and teals and blues and moody greens, there’s a shift in my preferred colors happening. Which definitely excites me.  Except I have so much black and black and white fabrics.  What was I thinking when I bought so much of these?  A quilt at the end of this post partially answers that question.  Like with the scrap quilt at the beginning of this post, this one is also from scraps of 5”charm packs.  Leftover blacks provide all the sashing.  If you look closely, you’ll see the variations.   

And in true spirit of my scraps, the back is from various black and white fabrics that I haven’t used so far and definitely won’t.  

Does all this mean I’m not buying fabric?  Ha!  Don’t be silly.  Below is a collection of fabrics for my next quilt.  I think I’m going to do a big glam clam - not sure.  But meanwhile I pet this pile of fabrics and continue to ponder…

And last, my bed currenty sports a quilt I made during my love affair with black and white.  It wasn’t a favorite when I made it.  I even had it long-armed.  And over the years it’s grown on me.  But still, I’m done with black and white. For now.