Category Archives: small quilts

Dog walk and pin boards

There are a lot of words I could say. Like it’s 70 degrees.

Like: I resisted taking a book from this Free Library kiosk. Ta-da! (Don’t be impressed — it was mostly full of crap).

Like: the light is decidedly spring-like today. Or, I’m worried about one of my kids again. Or, my sister has inexplicably stopped ripping my head off and handing it to me (my theory? She’s a walk-in now).

Or: it’s crazy to hand quilt a blanket I won’t be able to charge much for and anything I DO charge will probably keep it from selling. Or: how good deadlines are but how loathsome selling is.

But! I’ve got to save most of the words for those other pages. Which are coming. Which continue to draw me in. Which I cannot wait to be able to share with you all.

I swore

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I swore an oath, I mean. To uphold the Constitution and so on in service of my duties as a Notary Public. This is the sort of formality that when practicing law seemed a quaint inconvenience but this morning (after being a stay at home mom for a long time (and now a stay at home whatever)), seemed a little momentous.

The raised right hand. Proof of identity. Presentation of the letter of appointment.

After swearing the oaths, I signed the big ledger book. All wrong. Oh dear. The beautiful thick pages with tri-color lines marred by my inability to follow directions. I was halfway done, when I noticed the pen tied to the counter, clearly meant to service the signees. Appalled, I asked, “Is this supposed to be in black ink?” Oops. And then I scribed today’s date in the box meant for the commission’s start date. Scribble. Scribble. “I’m so sorry,” I said to the nice man behind the counter (a counter, which, by the way came up to my collar bones and might’ve had something to do with an impaired performance) (nice try, Dee). “Your beautiful pages. Your lovely book. I’m so sorry.” I got the sense that the clerk didn’t give a shit about the book but appreciated my forlorn apology.

K drove me in and out. What a guy! I had three months to get this done and left it to very nearly to the last minute.

Other news: I registered (correctly, as it turns out) for Newton Open Studios yesterday. It takes place the first weekend in April. I’ve participated five times in this city-wide event, but it’s been a while. I have so much finished work! So much almost-finished work. As long as I put the writing first, I’m good. Actually — excited!

Return

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One to the other. Season. Place. Ground and sky. A flight back to Colorado later today. Special china’s been put away but the folding chairs — not yet.

I called this patchwork a “whimsy” elsewhere. An unstoppable doodle. Irrepressible play. Now that the pile of these is growing, I probably ought to figure out what to do with them. Maybe make longer panels for the hall double hungs upstairs? Facing east, those windows get blasted by morning light, so the cloth’d be like glass for a few hours a day.

There was a big smudge on my phone camera lens. Ambience or malfunction?

And, after a couple days away, it’ll be back to the story.

PS Deb Lacativa‘s cloth is playing a star role in this patchwork (from my recent lottery win, blogged about here). Some of my recent walnut dunks show up, as well as older indigo creations of mine.

Misbehaving silk and designing cloth

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For weeks, the top half of this little piece has been pinned to the design board. I eyed it now and then. Was it done? If not, do I have more fabric in that spooky palette? Yesterday, while listening to Weasel Sessions, I started attaching the lower section.

Two challenges arose: 1) that goddamned silk on the lower right. It will not behave! The buckling, sliding resistance to my organizing stitch may be more than I can stand this week. Then, 2) there’s that disruptive brown strip in the mid-section. It’s so distracting, it cannot stand — so integrate or undo?

Sometimes these challenges ask to be met. And maybe I did myself and the little quilt a disservice working on it with the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on. That’s its own kind of problem.

But really, I think the spooky, little horizontal beginning might be trying to tell me something, like ‘leave me alone’. Maybe it is already a piece unto itself?

Back to the board for consideration! As Jude recently said, “cloth needs to rest, too”. Actually, maybe this isn’t the cloth resting so much as the design-process resting.

In the meantime, behold my first spoonflower experiments.

When ordering both swaths, I significantly tweaked the repeat into a smaller scale, but that somehow didn’t get transmitted. So disappointing, but definitely worth another go.

The heat has broken. Windows are flung open and the fan whirs fresh air into the house. Thank god!

My sister is doing much, much better but her heart is beating too fast. I just talked to her and she reported pain from last night. The 15 people rushing in. All the machines she’s plugged into. They may do an ablation today. Must google and pray.

Wedge of orange

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It repeatedly amazes me how much a micro-change can impact overall design — as in ruin it. Quilters know this because it happens all the time.

Challenge: stick to an original design as much as possible (using photo on left as reference). I am allowing the inclusion of the inadvertently captured small wedge of orange (at bottom), but no other departures!

That means cultivating an openness to novel construction techniques while simultaneously casting aside a long-standing flexible approach to accidents and mistakes. ‘Oh look, I put this section back upside-down — is it possible I like it better this way?’

(Mercurial adaptability often employed in service of laziness — but never mind!)

Even as I stitched the dotted red floral rayon onto the lower edge, I knew it’d have to go: it’s not a small wedge of orange at all! I couldn’t let myself fall down on this challenge so early on.

Other sections are coming along.