OMG February

 I had a wonderful time at QuiltCon in Atlanta but I don't have time to write that long post.

Instead:  a very quick OMG report.  Success!

(1)   A wall hanging to enter in the GFWC-IL Tenth District Art Contest on March 1

(2)   A daisy-themed something for the outgoing president of the P.E.O. Lake County Round Table

Update:  it turns out that the art contest specifies that entries must have been made in 2022.   So I will enter a wall hanging I made a year ago.

(3)   A baby quilt commission.   I'm not sure when the baby is due, but the quilt is due before March 11 (the day of the baby shower). 

Delivered to the baby's great-great grandmother on February 18.

Bonus:   something PINK for the February RSC color.   

These stars are 4.5" unfinished.  Made from Rhododendron Trail left overs.

Linking up with Elm Street Quilts    

 

Weekly update: pink and a lot more!

 

Friday, 6:30 a.m.:  I shoveled the driveway and front walk before I'd had any coffee!   We got about 3" from the storm.  (Milwaukee, 45 miles north, got 9".)

Saturday evening we enjoyed the Lake County Symphony Orchestra's performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 1.  

I enjoyed a long, albeit muddy walk on Sunday afternoon.  Upper left:  beaver lodge.  Lower right:  horsetails greening up and dogwood reddening up.

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Friday afternoon I delivered the I Spy baby quilt to Eva, the baby's great-great-grandmother.  Eva is 92 and still lives on her own!  We had a lovely visit.   She was delighted with the quilt.  

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I sewed, trimmed, and pressed all the cut-away corners from the I Spy blocks.  Rather than put them in a ziplock bag I kept sewing. These little stars are 4-1/2" unfinished.  

Speaking of ziplock bags, I found leftovers from Rhododendron Trail.  The HSTs are 1.5" and the stars are 4-1/2" .  Voila -- my RSC for February!

More Rhododendron Trail left overs:  I miscounted when I made the star blocks -- 18 blocks too many.  Here's a possible layout on the design wall.

Another ziploc bag held pairs of triangles left over from Labyrinth Walk  I've sewn and trimmed them. (2-1/2").  I have an idea for using them.....

Linking up with  Design Wall Monday, Scrap Happy Saturday , and Oh Scrap!

P.S.  This weekend the American Quilt Study Guild held Winter Study Centers.  I signed up for two Zoom sessions.   "Finding Community in Quilt Stories" was about the way that quilts are used in picture books.  "True Crime Obsessions: Clues in the Patchwork" was about Iowa writer Susan Glaspell's one-act play "Trifles" based on a murder she covered when she was a journalist.  She later wrote a short story, "A Jury of Her Peers" based on the play.    Early 20th-century feminism, quilt blocks included.

BOTW: what a family!

Marie Benedict's latest novel again tells the story of women whose names we may know but whose lives we don't know much about.

Aristocratic, glamorous, on the verge of going broke -- the Mitford family could have been dreamed up by a satirical novelist except that they were very real. (And, actually, eldest daughter Nancy did thinly-disguise her siblings in two of her novels.) Diana, the second daughter, divorced her husband (heir to Guinness brewing) to marry Oswald Mosely, head of the British Union of Fascists. Unity, the third daughter, was enamored by Adolf Hitler and became part of his inner circle. (Brother Tom and sisters Pamela, Jessica, and Deborah led somewhat less sensational lives. The senior Mitfords, called Muv and Favre by their children, vacillated between genteel almost-poverty, hatred of the "Huns," and admiration for Moseley's BUF.)

Marie Benedict focuses on Nancy, Diana, and Unity.  Nancy's first-person account shows her trying unsuccessfully to talk sense into Diana, Unity, Muv, and Favre, dealing with her ineffectual alcoholic husband and her childlessness, and trying to make a living with her writing. Diana and Unity's stories are told in the third person. Diana uses Unity's connection to Hitler to strengthen her marriage to Moseley. Unity fancies herself a bridge between Germany and Great Britain, not realizing that Hitler is exploiting her just as he exploits everyone in his quest to conquer the world.

Nancy's story concludes: "How personal is the political in the end, I think. It turns each one of us into the authors of our own histories, we become patriots and heroes and, where necessary, spies and traitors. Which one of these, I wonder, am I?" (p.395)

Midweek: the joy of giving, and I Spy progress

 

On Tuesday I gave ten of my quilts to CTCA in Zion.  

The concierge and I took our masks off for the photo op. (I keep a mask in a ziploc bag in a pocket of my purse and had tor rummage around to find it.)

This is the tag that I pinned to each quilt.

I've donated 25 quilts this month.    I will take the wheelchair quilts I've finished (7 out of 13) to the March 1 guild meeting.   I have reduced the mountain of finished quilts to a hill.

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In the studio:  I added a row to the I Spy quilt.  I auditioned several possibilities for the borders and in the end chose a combination that I hadn't expected.    

My plans for today have changed and I think I'll be able to finish piecing the back, get it basted, and begin quilting.   This is a commission quilt and I'd like to deliver it so as to have the money in hand when I go to QuiltCon next week!

Linking up with Wednesday Wait Loss Midweek Makers

Weekly update: bits and pieces

 

On Friday we had lunch with our friends Ann and John at Hackney's in Glenview. Stevens and Ann were kindergarten classmates in Summit, NJ, in 1945. Ann is a wonderful keeper-in-touch and found us through Rotary several years ago. I hadn't been to Hackney's since I was in high school.

AAUW-Waukegan Area Branch met in person (yay!) on Saturday.  The program was about the African-American Museum at the England Manor in Waukegan.  After her presentation we all look forward to touring it.

I stopped at three thrift shops on my way home from the AAUW meeting and scored four cotton sheets, 13 yards, for $13.00.   This care label was on one of them.  Read through to the end. 

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In the studio:    I made 36 12" churn dash blocks for a QOV block drive.

64 4.5" (unfinished) I Spy blocks for the baby quilt I'm making on commission.   When I add inner/outer borders it will be about 44" x 44".   

Linking up with Design Wall Monday and Oh Scrap!

P.S.   Unusually warm temperatures + abundant sunshine = no excuse for not walking!  

The trail at Lyons Woods alternated stretches of muddy gravel and ice so I had to step carefully.

This single red berry caught the afternoon sun just so when I walked at Spring Bluff yesterday.

Friday check in: finished!

 

I finished the daisy wall hanging.  I adapted a design from a pattern in the National Quilting Assn. magazine.  20" x 20".

It will be presented to the outgoing president of the P.E.O. Lake County  Round Table in appreciation for her six years in office.  The P.E.O. flower is the marguerite, or daisy, and there were seven founders.

I've made crumb-pieced backgrounds for several projects and I like the effect.

This is one of my OMGs for February.

Linking up with  Alycia's Finished or Not Friday  and Wendy's Peacock Party  and Sarah's Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?

BOTW: two graphic novels

Graphic novels are not a format that greatly appeals to me.  That's a personal preference. I know they are very diverse, from traditional comic books to Japanese manga to original works of fiction and nonfiction, with titles appropriate for (and to appeal to) kids, teens, and adults.  They're all represented in my public library's collection.  (Said library being my former place of work.)

One of the reading prompts for The Page Turner 2023 is "a graphic novel."   I welcomed the opportunity to expand my reading horizons and chose Art Spiegelman's Maus (v. 1 and v. 2).

I've known about Spiegelman's powerful book for decades. It has been recently been challenged in a number of school districts "for violence, nudity, and profanity." I think it is a splendid story. Vladek Spiegelman is a man scarred emotionally and physically by the unimaginable horror of his experience in the Holocaust, forever questioning why and how he survived when his family and friends did not. He was clever and scheming, loyal and loving. His son Art uses his talent as an illustrator and writer to try to make sense of his father's tortured and complex story. Art's love shines through his exasperation with his father. The Holocaust should never be regarded as just a historical episode. It affected millions of people and the ripples from that are with us today.

As for the challenges: no, it is not a book for small children. But high school students can handle it, and certainly adults can, too.

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Maia Kobabe's memoir Gender Queer has also been challenged in schools.  I read it last fall to see what the fuss was about.  I thought it was great.  Maia comes to terms with er [that's a pronoun preference] identity on many levels -- sexual, intellectual, professional, familial--and documents that journey in word and picture.  Once again, it is not a book for small children.  For teens with questions, or teens with friends/relatives with questions, or for adults with questions,  this story of one person's experience can illuminate the way for others.

(And I think Kobabe's parents are exemplars of understanding and support..)    

Weekly update: a giveaway and an OMG start

We got out to two forest preserves this weekend.  I'd have walked farther but the snow-covered trail was hard going, even with a hiking stick.  

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I've always liked having a stash of finished quilts on hand.  That makes it easy to donate a quilt to a fundraiser  or give a quilt to someone in need.   My quilts-to-give had increased from a pile to a small mountain.  This week I did something about it.

I donated 15 quilts to Staben House, a transitional living facility run by Waukegan Township.  They have capacity for six families with one to four children in each.  The families stay an average of four months.  They can use the quilts while they're there and then take them when they leave.   (Our guild  charity project in 2016 provided quilts and pillowcases for Staben House.) 

I realized how many quilts-to-give were not labeled.   Now they are.  I have a second batch to give to another agency this coming week.

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Meanwhile, I've begun a daisy wall hanging that's one of my OMGs for February.  

Linking up with Oh Scrap! and  Design Wall Monday

BOTW: palace intrigue

 

In 2016 a not-well-liked housekeeper at Buckingham Palace is found dead at the edge of the indoor swimming pool.  The  news makes its way to the Queen.   She is 90 and slowing down somewhat physically but not mentally.  She encourages an investigation that involves her Assistant Personal Secretary Rozie Ochoda.  The plot thickens when they learn that the dead woman began her career as an art historian inventorying the Palace art collection.  Why was she demoted?   The investigation is literally winding when Rozie goes down to the tunnels that connect the palace buildings.  The queen floats above it all, her tact and diplomacy ensuring that what needs to be uncovered is disclosed and what needs to be kept secret remains that way.

I very much enjoyed  The Windsor Knot, Bennett's first mystery featuring the Queen and her  Rozie.  This second installment did not disappoint!

The third in the series, Murder Most Royal, has been published in the UK.  U.S. release date is September12, per Amazon. 

And coincidentally we are watching Season 5 of The Crown on Netflix with Imelda Staunton playing Elizabeth.

Midweek: January summary and February plans

 

Rabbit, rabbit -- it's February 1!

I had a great quilting month.

YTD fabric IN:   20 yards, free  (a gift from a friend)

YTD fabric OUT:  50-3/4    

Here's the new flimsy.   2-1/8 yards, 42 x 54.

The cheddar and gray/taupe solids were part of the charity quilt kits available at the guild meeting in December.  The charity chairmen said they'd put the kits together with what they thought might make a nice wheelchair quilt but that we could use the fabrics as we chose.  The kits I took turned out to be 20 yards and I have assuaged any guilt by making 12 wheelchair quilts (six quilted) that used more than 20 yards.

The kits had 1/2 yard of cheddar and four FQs of taupe/gray.  I didn't think I'd find anything to go with that dark taupe.   But when I saw the pattern This Way, Not That by Jen Kingwell (see Monday's post) the light bulb went on.   Since there was twice as much taupe as cheddar I added the rust.  It was fun to fussy-cut motifs from the African wax resist FQs I've been saving.   The border looks like two different fabrics but that's fussy-cut, too.

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My OMG list for February:  

(1)   A wall hanging to enter in the GFWC-IL Tenth District Art Contest on March 1

(2)   A daisy-themed something for the outgoing president of the P.E.O. Lake County Round Table

(3)   A baby quilt commission.   I'm not sure when the baby is due, but the quilt is due before March 11 (the day of the baby shower). 

Bonus:   something PINK for the February RSC color.  (The baby is a boy so I can't double-duty.)

Linking up with OMG at Elm Street   Midweek Makers  Wednesday Wait Loss