New top done

A new red, white and blue top finished for the Quilt Bank of the Bayberry Quilt Guild which is trying to get some 50 quilts for a veteran's charity. They finish the tops - which is wonderful for me because I don't enjoy the quilting part and usually get in a rush and do a sloppy job.  This design was inspired by Karen Griska's "Cabin Quilt" which she posted on her Selvage Blog a couple of weeks ago.   (see side bar) The sewing, even the half-square triangles, goes quicky if you have a good stash in the colors you plan to use.  I had plenty of reds, whites and blues. 

I'm not sure if Karen cut all her strips the same width, she probably did because she's a very precise quilter. But I did not attempt to keep them all the same width. I love an ad lib method of quilting. Even with a simple design that might be called traditional, it feels like being an artist and making decisions constantly.

This method of working is my preferred one even though I do only a few quilts I actually call art quilts.  But my friend, Dottie Moore, of Rockville, South Carolina works much that way and all her quilts are art quilts.  I was browsing magazines yesterday and came upon the the current issue of Machine Quilting Magazine with Dottie's name on the cover. Inside is a wonderful article  showing several of her signature quilts with trees and an article by Dottie talking about her entirely intuitive way of working.  I haven't seen her for six or seven years but I see her work published regularly and never get tired of her iterations of landscapes.

Stash -- in Grace's Basement

This is not Grace's basement -- after having been to Grace's basement I am not ashamed of my sewing room and my stash, they are as a child's sandbox is to an ocean beach.  Grace is cochairman of our guild's Quilt Bank.  She has been making and collecting from the guild members charity quilts for many years.  Fabric gravitates to her, that is to say, to her basement. It's an ordinary suburban house and it has a nearly full size basement which as of Wednesday, when it was opened to guild members, probably didn't seem to have decreased in stash amount. She estimated over 3000 yards of quilting fabrics.

So my stash closet (bottom photo) may be kind of messy but the fabric stored on the shelf and the one above it that is only partially visible and in shelves and containers below, really is not much fabric ... in comparison.  But I felt guilty enough about my stash that I took only a few pieces from Grace's basement meant for the red, white and blue, unfinished quilt top that is lying on the floor as if it were a rug. That top will be finished tomorrow with another border of half-square triangles and another fabric border. Then it will be given to Grace at the next guild meeting since a current project if patriotic colored quilts. Her committee does the quilting.

The pile of stuff on my bed that rarely gets used as a bed are what we call UFOs, unfinished objects.  Four are pillows and a fifth piece will become a pillow cover, all for the guild's show boutique. The miscellaneous and indistinguishable things are quilts to be quilted.  And on the design wall are my nearly complete blocks for a show quilt that will have 42 embroidered and embellish circular designs -- I have a few more to do before it is sewn together.   So this is where I'll be many days the next couple of months.  When I finish the red, white and blue top, I'll have a morning of straightening and the room look better ... for a while.

Potourri of Blocks

This twenty block quilt top will go to the Bayberry Quilt Guild's "quilt bank" charity committee which finishes tops. They said at the last meeting they need quilts in colors and patterns that appeal to men more than women. These black, white and red blocks were mostly send to me in block exchanges on Swap-bot. A few use the same pattern but all use different fabrics. I added the red stripping and I think it will be a strong statement on some guy's bed.

I really enjoy making quilt tops but do not enjoy quilting them so this is a good arrangement for me. They also said they were looking for several tops in red, white and blue for a veteran's charity. I looked at the "cabin quilt" on Karen Griska's Selvage Blog today and thought that would be easy and quick and pulled out a bunch of fabrics I could use in red, white and blue. It should be quick.  Of course, I always think a quilt top will be quick and it rarely is. This one took longer just to piece the stripping than I imagined. But that's okay. I enjoy doing it.  I have other quilts waiting to be quilted but piecing a quick (?) top appeals to me at the moment.

The GoldenTime of Spring

The forsythia in the header are outside my bedroom window and the nameless shrub besides it, (not in this picture) has beautiful furled green buds that will be leaves the minute the gray clouds lift and the sun returns. The picture here is of the evergreens an the big, leafless oak that is my view from here at the work desk -- it is an eastward view but certain evenings the setting sun sends a magnificent reflection of red and mauve into the eastern sky. I am always amazed to watch a sunset while looking in the opposite direction.

But as for "golden time" -- yes, even in the gray days as we've been having, I enjoy drives along Rte. 6A, the old deer trail/Indian path/stagecoach track along the northern side of Cape Cod, still two lane. There are a few commercial areas, a lot of white churches (at least three set on hills to look down in a paternal way at the surrounding homes.  The trees along 6A are as big as they get on Cape Cod, being as old as they get -- they don't get all that tall, since we have sandy, not very nutritious soil, but they get old and venerable and some are so close beside 6A that I have the illusion when driving along at night or on a rainy afternoon that they could step out  right in front of me, especially on the many curves on this road on which virtually no passing areas exist. 

I love to drive it anyway. Right now every home, however old or new, however big or small (and it is a wonderful, deeply satisfying mix of all those sorts) seems to have their forysthia, singly or in hedges or sprawling untrimmed shrubs. Most homes have clumps or rows of daffodils and narcissus, too.  A couple of days ago some of the flowering fruit trees had turned white, the few magnolias are opening.  Such a beautiful time of year even when there's rain spitting at me (and a minute's worth of hail the other day).  Lawns are greening and homeowners are raking, digging, trimming.  The gardeners were in my yard the last couple of days and did a good job.  Now where IS the sun? 

Poets Quilt Done at Last

Woman poets are marginalized, have been marginalized, if we are to believe modern researchers, since people ignored Shakespeare's sister. (Well, THAT was a tough act to compete with.)  If one looks through anthologies of poetry, especially modern poetry, the preponderance of poets are men.  Many, many women have been writing poetry ever since Sapho in Greece but, as in so many other arts, they are almost ignored. Women poets have won Nobel prizes (Wislawa Szymborska is a favorite and is in the panel that's mostly orange) and been names US Poet Laureates. Yet I heard a man who was supposedly teaching poetry say, "there are no great women poets."  I was taking a class from that man.  I left the class ... and told him how I felt about his attitude.

Because I read many women poets and love their work, I decided to make a quilt using selvages -- the "margins" of our quilting fabrics which many quilters cut off and discard. So I have  given twelve poets I especially admire large panels in the center of the quilt and I have put quotes by more than twenty other poets around the border.  I finished the quilt today and hung it over my piano which will be it's regular home.  Above is the whole thing -- you can't read any part of it in the photo and below is a detail showing three poets, Maya Angelou, Sylvia Plath and Elizabeth Bishop.  It's still National Poetry Month and I'm still giving poems to many, many friends.

Already Four

Finn, with a new haircut and his ice cream birthday cake and favorite cousin, Moses.  Finn is a lucky boy with a batch of cousins, only one is a little older (the ladylike Mercedes who'll start kindergarten next fall). There are, I think, seven in all and all were at his birthday party at Friendly's restaurant, along with the full compliment of aunts and uncles and all four grandparents and one old "Grand", i.e., me.  No, it was not total chaos, they were somewhat loud but all  fairly well behaved.

Finn's little sister, Stella, was festive a with a balloon theme head band made by crafty mommy, Cory who sells many styles of headbands on her Etsy shop.

It's hard to believe there were no, grandchildren when I moved to Cape Cod five years ago and now there are three.  Middle brother, Cole, had a second birthday just three months ago.

Thank you, Karen

This darling pin cushion and the two jeweled "pinsies" were made by Karen Griska, the publisher of The Selvage Blog (see sidebar), one of my favorite blogs.  She is a wonderful quilter but also makes the pinsies and pin cushions, all in a wonderful varieties and now and then she gives some away to her blog followers.  I was lucky enough to win this one. Since I use a lot of red, it couldn't be more perfect.  Thank you, Karen.

I have her fan pattern of which she's shown a number of iterations lately.  At the moment I'm champing at the bit because I have a pile of UFOs that I MUST work on -- although maybe not finish all of them -- before I can allow myself to try the pattern, one I really, really love because it's perfect for the way I like to quilt -- with scraps and without templates.