Weekly Update: making history (with mittens), pink and more pink, Grassy Creek!, and reading

It was beautiful at the beach when I snapped the photo but at 19 degrees I didn't linger!  The clouds have returned and there's snow in the forecast. 

Years ago I read a time management book that likened the results of procrastination to an obstacle that gets bigger around as the procrastination continues - so big that it takes more effort to go around it than it would be to just go over it.  That's how I've been with a non-quilting project this week that involved report-writing and statistics-compiling. I have to check to see that all the numbers add up and proofread the narrative before I send it off to the appropriate committee chairs. I have spent more time agonizing over it than it's taken to do it.  Will I never learn?     

We watched the inauguration on Wednesday with joy.   Wasn't poet Amanda Gorman wonderful?      This article describes the women's stylish coats -- and note the added commentary about the men's coats. <g> 

We saw Bernie Sanders and his mittens -- and so did the rest of the world.   Bernie memes have flooded Facebook.  I've paid most attention to those about libraries and quilting.   We are hopeful with the direction of the new administration. 

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On Wednesday evening the North Suburban Quilters Guild hosted  Australian quilt maker Jen Kingwell for their monthly program.  The guild boosted their Zoom license to accommodate all the guests, of  whom I was one. (One of 141 attendees.)  Just $10 for a grand quilt show and tell!   

 In the studio:  I made six 8-inch heart blocks for the RFQFA -- the Rotarian Fellowship of Quilters and Fiber Artists. 

Joy, aka the Joyful Quilter, has a Table Scraps sub-challenge for the 2021 Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  I wasn't up to making a table runner (especially in pink, this month's RSC color), so I made two 8" potholders.  

I made a few more pink framed four-patches.  They're 5.5" unfinished.

I saved the biggest accomplishment for last.  Grassy Creek is a flimsy!  

And big it is -- 96". Every year I say I'll make just a few blocks. Every year I get caught up in mystery quilt fever and make the whole quilt.  

The border has 28 uphill and 28 downhill blocks.  I miscounted and ended up with 44 going one way and just 12 going the other, so I had to make 16 more of "the other."  

  

I'll have fun fiddling around with ways to use the leftovers.

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One page in and I was hooked on Monica Wood's splendid memoir about 1963, the year that changed her life forever. No, JFK's assassination was the second event. The first, and more important, happened in April of that year: her father suffered a fatal heart attack on his way to work at the Oxford paper mill in Rumford, Maine. The unexpected, sudden death shattered the universe for Wood, for her mother, and her four siblings. Wood writes from the clearly-remembered perspective of her 9-year-old self: the neighbors who rallied around the family, her uncle (mother's brother)--the priest whose own center was rocked by the death, and details of life in a mill town when things were prosperous and ever  hopeful.

(How did I miss this when it was published in 2012? A friend recommended it after I reviewed Mill Town, Kerri Arsenault's 2020 memoir about the same town.)

Linking up with  Oh Scrap!   Scrap Happy Saturday      Design Wall Monday  Monday Making

Weekly Update: a flimsy and three-quarters, more scraps, and two books

 

We revisited Pine Dunes Forest Preserve on Sunday afternoon.  A hiking stick with a carbide tip was a welcome accessory on the packed-snow (sort of melting) trail. 

The framed four-patch batik project is now a flimsy.  In retrospect the borders (made from 2.5" squares) are a little heavy. I'm not sure whether I'll change them (smaller squares? piano keys?)...no rush.

Grassy Creek is three-quarters of a flimsy. All the blocks and the sashing are assembled.  To come:  a different sashing around the perimeter, an inner border, and an outer border. 

I fussed around with color placement--specifically, the gold corner triangles and the gray edge triangles -- but I was able to use a wide range of fabrics in each color so they're pretty evenly distributed.

 It's certainly busy!

The framed four-patches inspired a few pink blocks. I expect I'll make them in other RSC colors. 

The Magpies are making a quilt for our dear Celia's beloved granddaughter.  Each of us got six fat quarters from Celia's stash. We're to make as many Scrappy Trip blocks from them as we can. 

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This week's reading included two 2020 novels that were very compelling.

 Gifty is a brilliant neuroscience graduate student at Stanford whose research involves stimulating the brains of laboratory mice to measure their choice and risk behavior.  She says, "In my work I am trying to ask questions that anticipate our inevitable recklessness and to find a way out but to do that I need to use mice." (p. 226) 

Her own choices/risks come from her upbringing in the urban south, the child of Ghanaian immigrants. She grew up in the shadows: of the Pentecostal faith that her mother enthusiastically embraced, of her father who could not adjust to America and returned to Ghana, and always in the shadow of her adored athletically gifted older brother who died of a drug overdose while still in high school.

Louise Erdrich draws on the true story of her grandfather, a Chippewa on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota.  In the early 1950's Congress considered major legislation to remove the tribe from the reservation.   The story is more complex than this grassroots advocacy effort (a decade before Civil Rights activism in the American south and two decades before the American Indian Movement).  The other story threads involve Patrice Paranteau who is determined to better herself and help her family.  She travels to Minneapolis to try to find her sister.  She confronts two men, one native and one white, who think they are in love with her.  There are teachers and townspeople, farmers and factory workers. The characters are memorable.  

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Linking up with Monday Making  Oh Scrap! Design Wall Monday 

P.S.  Look who turns three to the fourth power (3 x 3 x 3 x 3) on Monday!  (When I showed him the photo he said, 'Boy, I'm an old guy.")

Friday check in: MQG swap reveal!

It's time to reveal the results of the Mini Swap hosted by the Modern Quilt Guild -- at least, of my part in it.  Kathy C. was my swap partner.  Here's the 24" mini quilt that she sent me.   Gray and coral are two of my current favorite colors and I love batiks.  

 

I used batiks for "Toward the Morning," the mini I sent to Kathy. 

This was the first time I've made a flange binding. 

The triangles-in-formation design is from a stenciled frieze at Crab Tree Farm which I toured in July, 2019 .   

The colorway was inspired by the sunrise photo I took when we were in Crisfield, Maryland, on our 2019 Road Scholar trip. (Little did we know that we wouldn't have RS trips in 2020 or 2021.)  

The swap was fun and I plan to enter next year!  

Linking up with Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? and  Finished Or Not Friday

Weekly update: some pink, OMG, and a squirrel

 Lynn and I have known one another since kindergarten. We reconnected last year on our high school class's 50th reunion FB group.  She joined me on Tuesday for a hike at Illinois Beach State Park. It was a pleasant 3-mile catching-up.  

Wednesday my husband and I went out to discover a new-to-us segment of the lakefront bike trail.  It was so calm -- in great contrast to the upheaval in Washington, D.C. which we watched on the news, horrified.  

(You can tell it's a different day by the color of my turtleneck. :) )

The sun was out on Saturday when we revisited Middlefork Savanna  in Lake Forest.  That's teasel on the left.  It is so photogenic but it is actually an aggressive invasive species.  (It was used to raise the nap of woolen cloth.  Read more here.)  

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In the studio: a corner of the MQG mini quilt. I will mail it to my swap partner tomorrow.  Midweek I'll show the entire quilt and share the story of the design.  

I'm fiddling with ways to arrange the HSTs I made for last year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge.  This month's RSC is pink.  

But, oh, those batiks! They were so happy to be let out of their wire baskets. (Remember, for two months I was devoted to the Civil War repro project.)  I had a few four-patches on hand. I had a few framed four-patch blocks on hand.  And now I have many more.  They are 5.5" unfinished and as you can see I'm considering setting them as nine-patches.  

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Nev March's debut novel, Murder in Old Bombay, is a mystery/romance set in 1890's Bombay -- the height of the British occupation.  Capt. Jim Agnihotri, an Anglo-Indian army veteran, is hired to find out who murdered two Parsee (Zoroastrian) women. It is not a clear-cut case.  Jim's life is in jeopardy as he untangles a web of blackmail and deceit.   It's entertaining and just complex enough to keep the reader going.

The All-Together Quilt is a charming addition to my collection of quilt-related picture books.  It is based on Piece-by-Piece, an intergenerational/intercultural quilt project in Norwalk, Connecticut.   Rockwell describes the process of making a quilt (how to cut the pieces and how to assemble blocks) in a straightforward, non-cutesy way.  The illustrations are of real people.  It's a gem!  

Here is the author's website.  

Here is the Quilt Alliance's story of the Piece-by-Piece project.

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

P.S.  In-person church services resumed today!  

Weekly update: project updates, OMG, and more

 

Our first forest preserve outings of the year -- Spring Bluff on Saturday and Van Patten Woods on Sunday.  

Enough people had walked along the trails to pack down the snow so I didn't flounder.

Left collage: red-wing blackbird nest, a gravity defying limb, horsetails.  

Right collage: gull tracks in the sand. 

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I've collected/accumulated household textiles for many years. In 2019 I sold nearly all of the aprons in a yard sale. In 2020 I cut up vintage tablecloths to make tote bags (see them here).   This year I'm assessing the dish towels.  I will keep those signed by designers (Tammis Keefe, Lois Lang) and others that have artistic potential (some day) but I am going to deploy others as actual everyday dishtowels.  Those they replace will become rags.

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Here's Clue 6 of the Grassy Creek mystery.  I sewed 1.5" strips together without foundation papers and thus I didn't have to pick out all that paper. 

I made two CW reproduction flimsies.  The nine-patch is adapted from a pattern by Connie Etherington and Mary Tesene.   

The  Jewel Box blocks just kind of happened.  I tried a variety of colors but blue and white won out.   I considered light chain or dark chain, triangles in or out. I considered a straight setting with or without sashing and a ring-shaped setting.  Then I put them on point. What a difference!  I tried pink for the setting squares but the one print I had enough of was way too intense.  I searched further and found a homespun check for the setting squares and a non-repro stripe for the setting triangles.  The outer border is a mid-1990's repro (Smithsonian Little Sister Quilt by RJR). 

This brings this chapter of the great CW Repro Stash Reduction Project to a close.  I used up just shy of 50 yards on the 12 flimsies. Don't worry!  There are more to come. 

 

But now it's time to declare my January One Monthly Goal.  I signed up for the Modern Quilt Guild mini-swap.  I've corresponded with my assigned partner who told me she likes bright batiks.  I have a few baskets of those.  I've switched gears from CW traditional blocks to modern designs.  I have an idea and I even managed to chart it out on EQ8. 
Here's the initial fabric pull.

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Fiona Davis writes novels about New York -- specifically, about iconic New York buildings.  The Masterpiece (2018) is about Grand Central Terminal (the technical name, as the reader learns early on). The story is set in the late 1920's when the Grand Central School of Art operated on the upper floors, and in 1974 when Grand Central was dilapidated, dangerous (muggers, etc.), and threatened with destruction.  Who was the pseudonymous artist whose work is discovered in the abandoned classroom? Why is it purloined before it can be authenticated?   There's a mix of historical education and some real suspense.

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Linking up with One Monthly Goal     Oh Scrap!    Monday Making

 Design Wall Monday

P.S.  I bought this at Salvation Army this week.  It's a beautifully appliqued batik flower.  The professional framing is great but the setting is dull.   I plan to un-frame it and set the block in a more interesting way.  It's signed at the bottom corner: J K Coon, 2011. 

Happy New Year! PBS mementos, the year's favorites, and the annual reckoning

 

Postcard from a collection I purchased in Fargo circa 1996.  Published by the Gibson Art Company, Cincinnati.  Postmarked Casselton, ND, December 30, 1924.  Sent by Louise (no surname) to Miss Nora Buttke. Message: "Dear friends: We wish you folks all a very Happy New Year. I had planned on coming out for New Years but as it happened that I was not home for Xmas as much as I would have like to be. Would like to be for New Years now. We expect the Teetz family for New Years. Thanks very much for Xmas gift. Will See you after N.Y. then.  Friend Louise." 

Does it seem that there are more "best of" and "year in review" stories than in previous years?   Not just in quilting but in books, movies, music, and all manner of topics (some of which I follow and most of which I don't).  I think we have a greater awareness--noticing, measuring, evaluating, and certainly commenting more.   

Last week Judy Woodruff, PBS Newshour anchor, invited viewers to submit their mementos of 2020.  I was among more than 200 viewers who responded.  I sent photos of Shelter in Place, the quilt I created during the first shut down (mid-March to the end of May).   My entry was one of 20 chosen for their story!  Here is the link.    

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Cheryl at Meadow Mist designs is hosting the Best of 2020 link up.  Shelter in Place was definitely my favorite quilt.  Here's a collage of other memorable sewing.

I made 500 masks from March to May.  (I've made a few more since then but no mass production.)  The collage includes the vintage bias binding I used up when elastic was in short supply. 

I made mug rugs.  Top: birthday gift for a friend (with a matching mask). Left:  P.E.O. home fund gifts. Right: retirement gifs.

I made tote bags. Those in the top and lower right photos are made from vintage tablecloths and quilting cotton -- favors for the Magpies' meet up in February. The tote on the lower left is for a P.E.O. sister. 
 

I made many quilts. Here are a few.    

This documentation is a good lead in to the December stash report:   78 yards in, $80  /  46-5/8 yards out.  Year to date:  916-3/8 in, $1383 / 960-3/8 out.  Net reduction: 44 yards.  Hooray!

This is the 23rd year I've tracked fabric acquired and fabric used.  Acquired means purchased (with my money or a gift card) or received for free.  Used means sewn, sold, given away, or thrown out. (This last category included trimmings -- I toss slivers and dog-ears into a big bag. When the bag is full I weigh it -- 4 yds to 1 lb -- and count that as "out." After all, those orts [morsels] were part of the yardage that I counted as "in.")