Merrily Making post cards

I am not an obsessive compulsive person -- by no means! But I go through brief periods of activity addiction. That's why I'm making selvage postcards right now. I made another half dozen this afternoon and may make as many tomorrow morning. I'm on a roll and don't want to stop. Here are eight more from last week's spasm of postcard making. In truth I don't think they are as pretty or interesting really as the 50 butterfly postcards I made in a similar spell a couple of years ago but that was far, far more hard work I had thought of making more butterflies because I have additional very tempting patterns. I might yet. But for now it's the faat and furious I want to do. So, no apologies. I've begun seeing more and more quilters using selvages. Sometimes they put on the Serious Somberro and declare they're "saving history" or "being thrifty" -- that's my "frugalista" story.

Truth be told I just like fabric with words on it. I'm sorry that the printer I have which I love for many reasons, does not like to print fabric I've ironed onto freezer paper. If it did I'd probably go nuts. As it is, I have to purchase expensive packs of prepared paper for printing and I have not liked the tightness of the weave of the ones I've had. Besides, the "frugalista" part of me wants to use my own fabric, maybe even print pictures over certain kinds of prints. However, I've reached a point where I have to rein myself in with sewing projects as I've had to do with all kinds of things all my life. If I indulged in everything that sounds interesting or fun I'd never concentrate on any one thing. So, the opposite of obsessive, too scattered. I try to find a balance. Mostly I'm fairly content but I do allow myself these little "fits."

Dullest part of winter

These are a few of the latest batch of quilted postcards. The collection will grow, they were fun to make and I love the almost instant gratification of finishing something since I keep taking on big labor intensive projects.

This part of the year is the dreariest, it hasn't happened yet that one can tell the days are actually getting longer; that may happen in a week or two if there are clear days but this week is gray and leaden and it seems that the afternoon is not so far along when I look out and it's dark! As the winter solstice approaches there's the extra lights from Christmas decorations so the dark doesn't seem so oppressive. This is a weighty time of year; it's not pleasant to get dressed and go out except on the days when the sun really shines and the skies turn a wonderful blue, which seem to be fewer in January than any other time.

So I'm happy I'll be going away in less than two weeks -- heading to the other side of the equator where it's high, hot [and unfortunately probably humid] summer -- my first and probably only safari vacation. One of those bucket list trips. I've checked off most of the "gotta-see" places although there will always be "wanna-see" places. Life isn't long enough nor will I ever have enough money to go all the interesting places. More at another time, for now, I'm just happy contemplating and unhappy waiting for my passport to return with extra pages in it. It WILL, I just know it. Got to think positively.

The whole top

That's it. The whole enchilada! Well, not the WHOLE, quite -- no backing, no quilting, no binding, no hanging sleeve ... but the piecing is done! Whoopee! Hurray! I did the math, it came to 1520 pieces. A few were sacrificed to make the center square and a few others to square up th corners. So a nice round 1500 will be close enough. This is the last time I'll bore those who read this frequently with this quilt. I'll drudge on and do the necessary remainder but I'll show other photos and talk about other things hereafter. What a big sigh of relief!!!

UFOs and all that nonsense

No, no, no -- I don't really mean little green men although the frown-y faces are appropriate. I mean the stack of neat -- yeah, I'm neat about this -- unfinished object/quilts. I will make a serious effort to get them done in the next couple of months.

1. The starburst is pieced and there'll be a final photo tomorrow. I was terrified the corners wouldn't turn out right and procrastinated all of yesterday about sewing the border and corners. But they're fine. Now it must be quilted! OMG! That's daunting too.

2. The quilted postcards are almost done, just a bit more to whipstitching and then do the writing on the back. It's good, I've discovered, to write the word "POSTCARD" on the vertical that divides message area from address area and to draw a little square for a stamp. This tells the dimmer lights in the US Post Office you are not mailing a mini-dishcloth.

3. And then: There's a reversible quilt that I must do next because it is for someone else. Actually I look forward to doing it because I think I'm going to like how it turns out.

4. The older projects: a quilt with fused roosters. The background is pieced but I have to fancy cut the roosters -- I love them, but not the time it takes to fancy cut.

5 A variation of a drunkard's path. About 1/3 of the blocks are together, hate sewing the curved seam even though it's not technically so hard. I know I'm going to like this quilt; it's just the drudgery of a couple hundred smallish squares with curved pieces.

Beyond that there are "Wanna-do" baggies with some of the probable fabric and the inspiration which is either a pattern or a picture of a quilt someone else made.

And in the forefront of future, I want to make several more "Quartets" of paper pieced stars from Carol Doak's most recent book which are Mariner's Compass stars. I want to dip into my nice, nice collection of fabrics with some metallic in them and do a gently glittery set of wall quilts.

Ho-hummmm, that sounds a lot like a year of work. And I know I'll take time out here and there and make some child size quilts for charity and other things will catch my attention. I've long, long thought of doing a pineapple log cabin and never have... oh, I could go on and on and on. But for now, I've got to remove paper piecing from the center portion of the starburst quilt -- an that's 900 pieces minus the 50 or 75 I did earlier today. If "Idle hands do the Devil's work," the Devil can just pass on by, my hands are not going to be idle for beyond the foreseeable future.

Digging into the past .. just a little

(Another couple of the current crop of postcards, these with Mother Goose themes: Humpty-Dumpty and the Knave of Hearts].

This morning I saw on my swap-bot page that I need to send some yarn to a woman who won a "Winner Take All" drawing. Problem! Yarn isn't a part of my life. When I was 6 or 7 a neighbor lady taught me to knit and gave me a ball of dark blue yarn. It was to become a scarf. I used it up and didn't know what to do to finish or continue and didn't really care. No more knitting in my whole life. I thought at first I'll have to find one of the knitting shops in the city, I had some ideas but they're not on my beaten path. Then I had a bit of a brain wave. I remembered having, once upon a time, for a reason I don't remember, a ball of white yarn. If I still had it -- I know I didn't use it -- it would be in the large hamper where I keep quilting UFOs, embroidery floss ["Maybe I'll do that again, someday" I think occasionally.] And other odds and ends. So I cleaned all the detritus off the top of the hamper and opened it with more foresight and trepidation than Pandora had when she opened her box.

Oh my, oh my! Yes, I had given away one or two of the UFOs I remember last seeing in there. And near the top were boxes and plastic bags of floss, including a lot of crewel yarn - but that wouldn't do for a knitter, would it? No ball of white yarn, must have given it to someone, perhaps to the "share" table at our quilt guild. But ah-ha! What's this? Three skeins of "Persian wool yarn"! Where did they come from? Why would I have bought them? Did they materialize from outer space? They look usable and surely are the right sort of thing. Wow -- you never know what you've pack-ratted away until you go searching.

I found a big bag of strips of fabric -- no, no selvages as I hoped at first. Some I recognized but what wss I thinking? Maybe "Log Cabin"? Should I chuck them or save them? They could be part of a log cabin quilt, but a very labor intensive one as most were only 1 to 2 inches wide. Still, nice and neatly divided by color group. Might as well save them. I've done several log cabins, I love the good old pattern. These are kind of dull lights and darks, they'd need an infusion of color with oomph to please my current taste. But .., quien sabe? I might use them. Back they went.

There was another layer [or two?] but I'd seen enough for one day. I neatened the floss, put other stuff back, and got ready to mail off the yarn. A good morning, something I don't need out of the house to someone who might be glad to have it. Enough of a look into my -- yes, I can say it! "Frugalista" ways. What a chorus of frugal housewives I hear singing in harmony, "You never know when it might come in handy." Many a pack rat's mantra.

New Year's eve

Back in the supposedly bucolic '50s, when I was a girl living on a Midwestern farm, the only way to learn about pop culture -- or any culture, really -- was the radio. Somewhere TV had been invented but it hadn't reach our part of the country. I discovered the Hit Parade, Sinatra, Como, The Andrews Sisters, Rosemary Clooney and then there was Elvis! I discovered the Hit Parade and listened religiously, as I listened to the Saturday Metropolitan Opera broadasts.

This came back to me today as I listen, as I have for some years, to NY's classical music radio station, WQXR, which each year does a "classical count down" of the top pieces as voted by their listeners. All warhorses of course. Beethoven is the heavy weight winner and his 9th Symphony is always number one, usually played around about midnight on New Year's Eve. The choices change position a little year to year but it's predictable -- except this year there's no Schubert Trout Quintet and I'm very deeply disappointed.

Celebration -- as in partying -- is something I have almost never done on New Year's Eve. Sometimes I'm a bit sad that that's how my life has turned out. Mostly I am content to listen to music I love, write a summary in my diary, perhaps write some resolutions in a new diary, throw the coins for an I Ching reading -- no. I swear to you, I do not think of it as predictive. I've been throwing the I Ching for years and am convinced it is pure chance, but it is always wise. Always worth contemplating. I've read it so long, [at least 30 years] I'm deeply influenced by the Confucian translation and the philosophy of moderation I find there. I have trouble empathizing with the many people who write at length about their "quests" and "spiritual journeys". It all seems so self-agrandizing. A balanced view of the world was defined by Lao Tzu and commented on my Confucius hundreds of years ago. We don't need to reinvent the wheel; we only need to keep our eyes and minds open so we are abreast of how civilization is progressing, or more often, spinning its wheels in a mire of ignorance, greed and selfish misery.

So that is my ritual, some introspection about my own progress through life, a few moments of thinking about something wiser than I am, and much very beautiful music ... a pleasant dinner, a little Scotch and the prennial resolution to try to read 100 books this year [I'm a slow reader and don't usually make it past 70]. And the recognition that in fact this is a totally arbitrary milestone, a social construct that I can chose to imbue with meaning or not since various peoples recognize various new year's dates and in fact there is no such thing, there is just a method of counting the days. We so often forget that the days we can count will be numbered and we know now what that number will be. I think of poet Mary Olvier's live, "what will you do with your one wild and wondrous life?"

Tortoise-like Progress

Sewing, sewing, sewing -- one triangle after another -- each with nine pieces ... won't I ever be done? Just to see what the thing will look like with it's borders, I put together the strips that will be two sides. Obviously they are not yet attached to the main section nor are the corner triangles sew together or to the side strips. Nothing has been properly ironed. Visually the idea is there. The little red triangles will be less prominent because they will be sewn on and literally will be smaller.

I WILL have the border on by the first of the new year! I promise myself!! I've got to stop having so much fun with the little postcards and keep my nose to the grindstone. But really, for psychological balance, I need the immediate satisfaction of the postcards too. So I'll balance the two and keep at it.