This and That • January 2024

January 14, 2024August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.18 Comments

Sometimes the title for these posts can nudge toward the trivial, but the first thing I want to talk about was anything but trivial.

My family.

Our four children do not live near us, for some, the far-away is very-far-away, and for others, it’s a bit closer. My husband proposed taking me out to dinner for my milestone birthday, but to “prepare for photos.” And “maybe don’t wear your sneakers.” We went to our local Fancy Dining Place, The Mission Inn, which was still decked out in holiday lights. When I rounded the corner to our table, the kids were all sitting there. Oh, My! I was quite touched that they would come to celebrate with me, and they spent the next day with us, too. Quite the loveliest of birthday surprises. By Sunday, they had all gone home, and the house was very quiet.

When an opening became available, I rejoined the Gridster Bee. It was one I’d started several years ago, but I’d bowed out last year. Patti, ever capable, took over and has been a steady hand in keeping it going, as many bees dissolve after a short time. We had our kick-off Zoom call at the beginning of the month (one positive from the 2020 pandemic is this technology):

I loved seeing Carol’s Christmas quilt, one done in an earlier iteration of this Bee.

I finished this. It’s a free pattern, here on the website (keep reading). I’d started writing it ages ago, but who knows where time flies? Inside is the color key for both this 2023 (softer) version of Painter’s Palette fabrics, as well as the (bolder) version used in 2019:

I haven’t yet finished the 2023 quilt; for one, I’m still embroidering the temperature range numbers onto the Circle of Geese block that I’ve used for a key.

And about this geese pattern. It was originally made by Kelly Liddle of JelliQuilts. If I could find her again, I’d link to it. She seems to have vanished without a trace, and it’s a pretty good pattern for this sort of thing. I’ve even written to the last email I have from her, when I paid for and downloaded the pattern: Zip. Nada.

Which brings me to the podcast I listened to this past week, where Ezra Klein and his guest, Kyle Chayka, talk about how the internet isn’t fun anymore. Boring, too. And part of it is what Chayka calls the SEO-ification of the algorithm. Everything resembles everything else, as we use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to get a wider reach. While this can have benefits, Chayka and Klein argue that we seem to be homogenizing our world, as every website looks like another as the robots send you to whatever you’ve liked before, and assume you will like again.

I’m fine with that, especially when I do a search on Temperature Quilts on Instagram. But I’m also not fine with it as it seems to have flattened out what we see. Like hashtags used to be an interesting way to get a range of images, from temperature quilts that began as crocheted blankets to the most recent version of houses, leaves, and birds. Now we just get the “TOP” images. Are they the top “eye-ball-getting” images? The most colorful? The most interesting? And how will we ever know what the robots, aka: algorithm, have come to choose what they are showing us.

Chayka says he misses the curated web, where various people wrote random things, like a writer went flying through a rainbow and put the colors up on a blog. A blog!?! Who writes those anymore? Well, I do. Maybe that is why I also write about quilting, but also more-than-quilting, trying to avoid being boring, and maybe to avoid having to clean up my sewing room:

(*from 2020, but it still looks the same*)

One more thing: this week is Road to California, a local, national quilt show. I’m signed up for two classes: one from Lori Kennedy (FMQ on Monday) and one from Annie Smith (Design Your Own Appliqué on Thursday). I’ll also go one more day, Saturday, so I can stay to get my quilt that is hanging in the show: Aerial Beacon.

I would take a closer photo of this, but it will have to wait until next week, when I get some pictures of it hanging in the show. If you are headed there, find me and say hi!

Here’s the Temperature Pattern download. It will stay here on my website for a bit, then move over to my Pattern Shop on PayHip. Enjoy!

UPDATE: The pattern is now over on PayHip, so head over to my Pattern Shop to download your copy.

300 Quilts · Happy Old Year Ending (Wrap-up) · Quilt Finish

Happy Old Year Ending: 2023

December 31, 2023August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

We can’t change the past.

Matthew Potts’ book Forgiveness: An Alternative Account holds this thought up to the light so the rays shine through in a multiple different ways, but the premise is always the same: “Even if we could completely undo the effect of what has been done, we cannot make it so that “the thing that was done never happened” (Jankélévitch, quoted in Potts, 77). That fact of the deed, and the impact of that fact if not of its effects, shall remain absolute and eternal.”

We can waste years of our lives angry at others out for all the wrong they have shown us. We can castigate ourselves for our personal failings (we all have our own list of them), vowing never to repeat them. We often struggle.

Potts’ answer? Bring in the principle of forgiveness: “Forgiveness seeks to live in the wake of loss. It accepts that what has been lost cannot be restored, and then it aims to live in and with the irrevocability of wrong” (23). He goes on to say that: “forgiveness also accepts that past as unalterable and so imagines what possibilities for the future its battered history might bear” (24). In other words, forgiveness is future-facing. “Whatever the past has been or the future may bring, we can begin, and begin again” (94).

I cannot quote enough of his book here to show you his extensive thinking around this idea. But I sometimes wonder — if we can not turn back time — why do we all turn our head to look behind us? Like how I started this post? These three quotes address this:

“As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you’re going to say, ‘Where did we come from, what happens next?’ The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future” (Margaret Atwood).

“One faces the future with one’s past” (Pearl S. Buck).

And finally, to bring it full circle: “Nothing we can do can change the past, but everything we do changes the future” (Ashleigh Brilliant). I liked Buck’s idea, that the lenses with which we view the future are colored by our past. Atwood is more tactical, encouraging to use what we’ve learned to plan our future. Brilliant, whose cartoon is above, cautions us not to waste our energy dwelling on mistakes.

I hope that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t tackle some of our UFOs, as I noticed that most of the quilt finishes (above) were pulled from my stack of UFOs. However, to think kindly about them, it’s like my past self left them for my current self to finish up (thank you, Pearl Buck). So, instead of rueing that new ideas in 2023 were sparse, I’m grateful that I had something to turn to to keep myself busy. I’m also trying to apply the ideas in Mr. Potts’ book to keep myself forward-facing. I’ve written up list of quilts I want to make in 2024, and I have already started on the first, sewing my way into this new year.

While I have a whole new year coming up in which to finish Potts’ book (and make quilts), what I’ve learned so far is this:
Evaluate where you are. Move on from failures.
Forgive, and then forgive some more.

Happy Old Year Ending–

Eclipse • Quilt #285 • my final finish in 2023

P.S.In a combination of satisfying, yet somewhat unhappy goodbye to 2023, our local quilt shop (Bluebird Quilts) decided to close, and I picked up several lengths of fabric for backings for these planned 2024 quilts. It was sad to say good-bye to the place where I started teaching; her reasons for closing are varied, and I wish her well.

P.P.S. If you are new here, you can always revisit some of my Happy Old Year Ending posts, where I re-introduce myself to my readers. And maybe give an observation or two. The one from 2019 is a classic.

*by Sharon Nullmeyer (@Nullsie on Instagram)*

300 Quilts · Christmas Quilts · Quilt Finish

Merry 2023 • Quilt Finish

December 6, 2023August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

Quilt Finish #284 from a kit, which means it sewed up lickety-split.

And my quilter…

…let me pick it up in Utah when I was there last month. Jen did a very cool pattern for me which I wrote about here. It’s a great little throw quilt, all ready for Christmas!

And oh, yes: “The Wexford Carol” from YoYo Ma and Alison Krauss on YouTube is a must. I love that first verse:

Good people all, this Christmas time,
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done
In sending His beloved Son
With Mary holy we should pray,
To God with love this Christmas Day
In Bethlehem upon that morn,
There was a blessed Messiah born.

I wish you a Merry Christmas, a holiday filled with wonder– and quilting!

300 Quilts · Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt · Publications

Santa’s Night Ride • Quilt Finish

November 26, 2023August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.14 Comments

This quilt has been on quite a ride. A Santa’s Night Ride, to be exact.

It has flown over to France, to the QuiltMania people, who publish three fine magazines: QuiltMania, Simply Moderne and Simply Vintage.

It has flown home.

And it will be making its debut in one of the QuiltMania magazines: Simply Vintage!

I know my friend Carol will like the Corgi on the bed. I do too! My quilt, Santa’s Night Ride will be in this issue, Number #49, which should be out about now. For those of you not aware of the THREE Mania magazines, let me introduce you to this one. While it says “Vintage” on the top, you might instead think of it as more traditional than vintage. It has a lot of our favorite quilt designs, as well as some new ones. I’m just pleased as punch to have my quilt published, and you can buy it from them directly here. Just click on the newest issue, with the Corgi on the front.

The center blocks are Foundation Paper Pieced (FPP) and they go together quickly.

I also made the border with FPP, and here you see my favorite roller. Instead of running to the ironing board, just use this tool, an automotive tool, with ball bearings — I prefer it to the old wooden one I used to use, and it’s $cheaper$.

I always print out a light version of my quilt and map out my quilting. Then I will often use a disappearing pen to transfer my ideas to the quilt.

I even sewed on the binding by machine. It seems like every December, when I’m deep in the Christmas season, I get the bug to make a quilt, but I always finish it up in January. Not this one! This is Quilt #272 in my Quilt Index.

Some tips on using scraps: Keep them in similar values for the center blocks. All my blocks are different, but they “read” the same because I used the same red/white for the inner triangles, and while I used four different greens for the large triangles, they are distributed evenly throughout each block.

Go for one fabric for the light background for both the center blocks and the outside little tree-triangles in the border, as it helps tie the quilt together. You can see above all the different fabrics I used in the outer tree-triangles: cut loose and cut from your scraps.

This has been in the works for nearly a year, so while you may have had a glimpse or two of this small quilt, I was waiting for the day when I could share the happy news, of this publication.

Happy almost December!

Other QM published quilts:
Riverside Sawtooth (in QuiltMania)
Elizabeth’s Lollipops (in QuiltMania: a photograph from a quilt show, but I’m counting it!)
Crossroads (in Simply Moderne)

During the pandemic, I agreed to let them share my blocks with readers of the QuiltMania newsletter. The patterns have now come home to stay, and most are free (see tab, above).