Midweek: Hourglass finish, OMG completed, and the stash report

 

Arabic Hourglass is finished.  I did rip out and re-sew the misturned blocks. However, as I basted it I found a dark block next to a dark block.  I left that one alone.  

I pieced the left over blocks into the back. 

I started and finished three other quilts this month.  The baby quilt (on the left) was my One Monthly Goal. The others just happened!

BTW, the baby arrived November 16.  His mother had some complications but both she and the baby are doing well.  The postponed shower will instead be a welcome party sometime in the new year.

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The stash report for November:

Fabric IN:  157-1/2 yards (138 from an estate sale and 19-1/2 from the guild free table).  $265.00 = $1.68 per yard. 

Fabric OUT:  61-3/8 yards.

Fabric IN, YTD:  2016 yards, $2047.00, $1.01 per yard.

Fabric OUT, YTD:  985-1/4 yards.   

Net GAIN: 1031.  Yikes!  But I could've spent time at the casino (or one of the numerous "play slots here" places), which I did not.

Linking up with Midweek Makers Wednesday Wait Loss OMG at Stories from the Sewing Room

Weekly update: Indigo Way begins, under the needle + reading

 

Sunday brought a dusting of snow.  It looks pretty and I am glad it won't last long.

Photo taken at the state park.  I stopped on the way home from church but I didn't take a walk!

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I've made many of the Quiltville mysteries.  I was greatly disappointed in two of them Grand Illusion and Rhododendron Trail) and skipped their immediate successors, Allietare and Chilhowie.  Those turned out to be designs I liked. 

Now it's time for Indigo Way.  I've decided to give it a go.  

I have a hoard of South African indigos but I'm still hoarding them.   These HSTs are made with dark, indigo-ish blues from my stash. 

Arabic Hourglass is under the needle.  I did rip out and re-orient the mis-turned blocks. 

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This Civil War story is told from a new perspective.  In 1862 Constance leaves her husband on their southeastern Indiana farm and enlists in the Union Army disguised as a man called Ash Thompson.  Ash tells the first-person experience of skirmishes (mostly), full-blown battles (some), missing her husband (frequent letters home (amazing that the postal service worked efficiently)).  Ash kept the disguise through capture, imprisonment, and confinement in an insane asylum.  Ash carries all the horror and trauma back home.  

Laird Hunt writes concisely and precisely: just enough and no more.  Perfect.

# # # # #  Linking up with Oh Scrap!  Design Wall Monday Sew and Tell

Friday check in: it's a flimsy

 

Moss on fungus at Lyons Woods on Wednesday. 

Queen Anne's lace is still lacy at Sun Lake on Thursday.

After all that walking (the Sun Lake trail is 2.5 miles) I allowed myself generous portions for Thanksgiving dinner.  

 Turkey was .59/lb with a $25 purchase at Jewel.  I bought a 17-pounder because we like the left overs. The sides were red cabbage with apples, wild rice pilaf with pecans, green beans (not the casserole!).  I always make Mama Stamberg's cranberry relish and this year I tried the chutney (click on the link to get the recipes for both).  

As the song says, "Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!"  I cook down the Halloween pumpkins, freeze the pulp, and make pies (and other pumpkin delights).    

# # # # #  I flung two quilts for the December 2 fundraiser for Cory's Project.  Quilts need to be out in the world rather than in a pile in the basement.

I thank Dot in NC who pointed out that the block is a variation of Arabic Lattice.  I'm calling it Arabic Hourglass.  

Can you find the mis-turned units?   Do you think I should change them?  

Linking up with  Finished or Not Friday Peacock Party

Weekly update: a finish, the WIP, and a reading trio

 A string of sunny days called for afternoon walks!  

Right:  the heron was intent on the frog it was eating so I could get a close-up photo.  

 

On a clear day you can see the Chicago skyline from Illinois Beach State Park.  

 I cropped and enlarged the photo and it may be a little blurry.   The dredger is for the shoreline restoration project. Look to the left of it to see the skyscrapers.

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Sparkling Triangles is finished.  

I made a zipper insert for the back.  I learned the technique from Mary Ellen Hopkins and I use it often.  It's interesting to note that people have looked for an actual zipper.  When I posted the photos on two FB groups the back got many comments ("most beautiful back ever!" "that's fabulous!").  

Here is the WIP I hinted at last week.  

Someone on a FB group posted a photo of a quilt in this design.  I promptly charted it out.  

I made 3.5" (unfinished) black/white/gray hourglass units, the same as the inspiration photo, until I used up all the gray.  I was aiming for 72 units and got 83.  It's good to have some extras. 

All the center units will point the same direction eventually.  

I cut 5" x 10" rectangles of the light and dark prints and cut them diagonally.  

A partial seam is involved. I start with the top piece and work to the right. (For the left block: light, green, light, green.)

 There's a lot of trimming required.   I could have cut the light and dark rectangles smaller but I didn't bother to figure out the math.

The blocks are 7.5" unfinished.

All 72 blocks will make a quilt 56" x 63".   When it's assembled I'll decide if I want to add a border. 

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Julie Otsuka spoke at the ALA conference this summer when she received an award for her latest novel, The Swimmers.  I read the copy I got at that program and enjoyed it.   A couple of months later Ann (Fret Not Yourself) recommended Otsuka's second novel The Buddha in the Attic.  I decided to read her first novel, When the Emperor Was Divine, and then the second.    

Emperor is about Japanese-Americans sent to internment camps, told from the first-person points of view of each member of one family: the mother who is holding it together, the daughter who is both gregarious and protective, the son whose effort to find his place in the world is turned upside-down, and the father who is sent away to a military camp.  What struck me is how "everyday" their lives were before--and the story ends before the "after."   

Buddha is thirty years before when mail-order brides sailed from Japan to their new, never-met husbands in California.  Some matches were successful.  Many were not.  The women tell their stories together:  "We were farmers, we were maids, we were mothers," echoing the way that history books lump people together. Later in the story they regain their own names.    

The Swimmers is contemporary, again  told from an unusual point of view -- "you" is at first one of a group of avid swimmers who regularly work out at a pool "far underground." When the pool is closed for maintenance the common tie is broken and the group disperses. For Alice the routine was a tether. Without the pool her dementia worsens and she moves to a care facility. Alice's daughter is the "you" in the second part of her book, an observer and recaller of Alice's life.  Otsuka's own mother's story forms part of her prize-winning book.

Otsuka's style is crisp, tight, polished.  The stories are wonderful and thought-provoking.

Linking up with Oh Scrap!   Sew and Tell  Design Wall Monday  

Midweek: catching up, indulgence, and a new start

 

Here are my Bramble Blooms blossoms.  They're fused (Heat 'n' Bond Light) and sewn with a narrow zigzag stitch.

Sparkling Triangles, continued:   I cut the border strips 6" because that was the width of the pattern repeat.  You might think the border print is sufficiently busy to make matched seams unnecessary, but I like to try to do that. (Maybe it's a holdover from all those years of garment sewing....).   I may trim the borders down an inch, but I may not.  

Yesterday was Part III of Barb M's estate sale. Here's my haul -- it worked out to $1.92 per yard.  (Part II was in October and Part I in September.)   The proceeds from each sale go to nonprofit organizations, this time to Make-a-Wish.   Paula said there are two bedrooms in Barb M's house (her husband still lives there) that she and her group haven't entered, both packed with fabric.  The next sale will benefit St. Judes and the sale after that will benefit  P.E.O.  "I'm a P.E.O.," I said, and Paula introduced me to Lisa, one of the helpers, who belongs to a P.E.O. chapter in Kenosha.  What fun!

To wrap up this midweek post:  here is the new start.  Come back on Friday to see these hourglass units pieced into blocks.  

Linking up with Wednesday Wait Loss

Midweek Makers 

Weekly update: sunshine, music, scraps + reading

 Just two walks last week -- Sand Pond (close to home at Illinois Beach State Park) and Greenbelt (on the border of Waukegan and North Chicago).   

On many days Stevens will declare right after lunch that he's ready to go out.   A good habit for both of us.  

Yesterday's baby shower (for which I made the quilt I showed last Wednesday) was cancelled.  The mother-to-be was having false labor.  (No baby yet, though.)    It was a good thing I hadn't given away our tickets to the LCCCA performance.   The Suits were great!  

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In the studio:  the I Spy baby quilt generated a pile of cut-away triangles, all yellow-and-novelty. I sewed and trimmed them into 1.5" HSTs and then made 4.5" star blocks.   Earlier this year I did the same thing with left overs from another I Spy quilt. I was able to get 33 little stars between the two quilts.

I'll let them marinate for a while.

More 1.5" HSTs were sitting in a box.  I thought about making them into ocean waves blocks (inspired by Ann/Fret Not Yourself) but the alternate snowball blocks were fiddly with such small pieces.  I made twosies into foursies into 16-patches.  The green-with-white setting fabric was a fairly recent acquisition and I had just enough of it.  (I cut setting triangles oversized to provide a good "float.")  I'm pretty sure I'll use the blue floral (selvedge date 2012) for the borders.  Blocks are 4-1/2" unfinished.  

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I've haven't attended the Zoom P.E.O. Book Club for a couple of months due to schedule conflicts (and once, I confess, because I didn't want to reread the book).  

 I'm all set for tomorrow's discussion when historian Katherine Sharp Landdeck will join us to talk about her book.   She makes history come to life with the personal recollections by these pioneering women aviators.  

Linking up with  Design Wall Monday Oh Scrap!   Sew and Tell

P.S.  I made a quilt block to decorate a plain shopping bag for the baby quilt.  I fused the block to the bag with ultra-hold Heat'n'Bond.

Friday check in: Bramble Blooms QAL

I've signed up for Audrey's Bramble Blooms QAL.  More accurately it is a DAL -- design along -- and I look forward to the exercise in creativity.  

The introductory post was about the fabric pull:  three colors in stacks, with a variety of prints in each stack.  

I started with light green, then went to pink, and finally purple.

Part one was to make a background using fabric from one stack.  Here's mine. 

They are similar but distinct from one another.

I learned to make pieced backgrounds in a  workshop with Pat Sloan and I've made them several times since then.  

The fun part with Bramble Blossoms is the second lesson:  freehand applique.  Here's my first draft.  More to come!  

Commenting on Audrey's Quilty Folk and linking up with Finished Or Not Friday and  Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?

Midweek: I spy a finished quilt

 

Yesterday the Zion Woman's Club enjoyed a program about Quilts of Valor presented by my guild friend Sharon.  ZWC learned a lot and I did, too!  

There are two veterans in our club and I'm going to propose a QOV award for them. 

This week's start-and-finish.

Our P.E.O. chapter is having a baby shower this coming Sunday.  One of our chapter sisters is expecting her first child in December.   Though the shower theme is books, and I have those to give, I couldn't NOT make a quilt!  Linda W., another chapter sister, is also a quilter and she made a bunch of blocks for this project.  

Blocks use a 5." square and two 2.5" squares to finish at 4.5".

At least one of the novelty prints I used here was also in the first I Spy quilt I made for another P.E.O. chapter sister -- back in 1999!  Even a F8th of a novelty cam go a long way.

I've sewn and trimmed all the cut-away corners into 1.5" HSTs.  

Linking up with Midweek Makers  Wednesday Wait Loss

Weekly update, part 2: spelling bee, a memorable concert, and a finished quilt

 Be sure to read the preceding post about the Fine Art of Fiber show! 

On Thursday evening we learned a new word: cicerone. ("A guide who gives information about antiquities and places of interest to sightseers." Pronounced "sisseroney.") I will never forget it because it's the word our Zion Woman's Club team busted out on at annual the Corporate Community Spelling Bee. (We came in third.)

Upper left: ZWC's team was three librarians: Steffi was ZBPL's children's librarian and a trustee and Deb is the media specialist at ZBTHS. (The library had its own team of current staff members.) Upper right: Cheri, the township supervisor, is one of Steve's fans. Lower left: I donated a quilt to the raffle. Lower right: ZWC staffed the raffle table.

Friday evening brought more memorable entertainment at Waukegan's magnificent Genesee Theater.  

They played all the favorites and the audience sang along. The byplay between the two was great fun. Peter is 85 and Paul is 86.

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?, Blowin' in the Wind, If I Had a Hammer -- the songs are as relevant now as they were in the 1960s.

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In the studio: On the Grid is finished!

I showed the block construction in last week's update.

Here's the back: the rosy pink and the upper right print are from last month's estate sales. The lower left has been in my stash for ages.

Linking up with Oh Scrap!  Sew and Tell

Design Wall Monday

P.S.  Thirty years ago this weekend I flew from Portland to Fargo to interview at the Fargo Public Library . I had never been to North Dakota before. Two weeks later Stevens and I flew from Portland to Bismarck for his interview at the Bismarck UCC. He had never been to North Dakota, either. (And ten weeks later we moved!)

Weekly update, part 1: another quilt show!

The Fine Art of Fiber is an annual collaboration among Illinois Quilters Inc., North Suburban Weavers Guild, and the North Suburban Needle Arts Guild. It is held the first weekend of November at the Chicago Botanic Garden. I went on Friday morning.

Bur first, the fine art of friendship! A quick FB exchange with Erica P., a fellow Quiltville fan, led to a meetup. As she and I were talking someone said my name. It was library colleague Elisa T. Later I saw Mary H., an Alpha Gam sister. And then Barb G. from AAUW.

Here are some of the quilts on display.   

This was my favorite.

There were also weavings and embroidered pieces.  It was nice to see work by Sue Daurio ! (Upper left and lower center.) 

The show features a big boutique of fiber-related items -- wearable art, jewelry, gifts.  

No visit to the Botanic Garden would be complete without photos of plants! 

Indoors: 

and outdoors (upper right: getting ready for the holiday light show)

Midweek: stash report for October, and November projects

 

Rabbit, rabbit!  

Here is the explanation of this first-day-of-the-month good luck charm. I first read about it in Trixie Belden and the Black Jacket Mystery, circa 1963 but only in recent years do I remember to say it. 

It was a chilly Halloween with a 1" snowfall that frosted the pumpkins and the chrysanthemum. We had 20 trick-or-treaters.  We gave out mini-packs of fruit snacks (those gummy things) and little boxes of raisins because I didn't want to be tempted by left over chocolate.

I had a productive quilting month, though I didn't work on my OMGs (placemats and a tote bag) or the RSC color. 

 I went to THREE quilt shows.

I finished FIVE quilts. 

I donated TWO quilts. 

I acquired A LOT of fabric.  

The stash report:

Fabric OUT, October:  44-1/4 yards.

Fabric IN, October:  295 yards, $447, average $1.68/yard.  (Estate sale bargains!)

Fabric OUT, YTD: 923-7/8 yards. (I contributed a lot to the guild raffle and have sent several boxes to fellow quilters.) 

Fabric IN, YTD:  960-1/4 yards, $1751 Average $1.82 per yard.   

..... I think I need to send out a few CARE packages....

Meanwhile, coming up in November:   a baby quilt for a P.E.O. sister.   (We haven't had a new baby in our chapter for a long time.)  The other quilter in our chapter has made blocks. I'll get them from her this weekend and work on the quilt next week.  The shower is November 12.   I'll declare this my OMG for the month because I know I'll get it done!

The flimsy I showed in Monday's post is under the needle now.  

Linking up with Midweek Makers  Wednesday Wait Loss and  OMG at Stories from the Sewing Room

P.S.  Thanks for the shout out today, Susan!