The Hexagon quilt in header photo

I love paper foundation piecing.  This particular one is a triangular log cabin design. It takes only a moment after being told that to see it. The total size is only about 15x15 and each of the six triangle blocks has 17 pieces in it.  I could not imagine sewing this design without using a paper foundation.

It looks difficult but in fact was quite simple, black and then white and then black again and so on around the center.  It took an afternoon of carefully copying the design onto tear-away paper and then sewing each triangle.  The look is, to me, wonderfully dramatic.  The red and white  striped fabric for the border seemed just right and was, in fact, the most difficult part as the corners are not at all easy to sew.

I have done many paper pieced quilts -- nearly all wall quilts, many of them from Carol Doak designs. But other block designs, or over all designs are quicker and easier and, of course, do not require the steps of copying and later tearing away the paper backing. There are a couple of paper pieced designs that I've been thinking of a long time, one a New York Beauty ... perhaps I'll get around to it this summer -- or perhaps not, as I really am committed to doing mostly stash smashing quilts that can be sewn more quickly and use up considerably more fabric.

Summer at Last

Deep red peonies at Heritage Plantation a couple of weeks ago.  I was give a bunch of white peonies and the living room was filled with that singular tangy-sweet scent ... then one morning I looked and there was a snowbank of white petals surrounding the vase.  They simply drop en masse when the time has come. So short lived but so wonderful what they last.

Right not the rhododendrons are fading away and in a very short time the hydrangias will replace them with mounds of blue, purple, white. And the rosa rugosa in the dunes at the beach are white, pink, and read  and delicately scented.

Summer is marvelous!  This week has been busy with "things" -- a memorial gathering yesterday for a woman who passed away quietly at home while watching TV and was not discovered for at least 12 hours, maybe more.  Very much a loner although also very much involved in politcial activities -- protest marches and so on.  Today a couple of friends helped me get out a maiing about the anthology we will be puting together in the fall. It was also an opportunity to talk (i.e, gossip) while we worked adressing and stuffing envelopes.

Tomorrow there's a birthday celbration but I hope to have time for some quilting in the morning and then get a photo of some recent quilts in my attempt to do some stash smashing this summer.

This quilt is not a stash smasher, it is only about 26x30. Our Uncommon Threads group chose the theme "Childhood or Youth" for the May challenge. This is an obvious metaphor of the roads that lie ahead for a young person  -- a pony-tailed girl in this case.  I'm sorry the color is not brighter. The white expanse reads as mountains although it could be a difficult sea or an icy expanse far to the north. In this sort of metaphor almost anything works.

Speaking of metaphors -- spelled differently but nevertheless the same word, an online literary magazine has a couple of my short stories, one flash fiction the other longer story.  If one searches Metaphorespring19 the stories will be found in the index and can be read (free) by simply clicking their names.