I just finished sewing this together, and smoothed back up on the wall to do the next step: audition borders.  Those blocks have been orphaned on my wall for nearly a month now, so it’s nice to have them all sewn together (so I won’t worry about them falling off and never getting them back in the arrangement I’d decided on).

I went up to Bluebird Fabrics, which stocks a lot of Kaffe Fassett fabrics, thinking that his florals might do the trick.  But I decided it was mixing two different time epochs–not where I want to go with this quilt.  So I dug back into the stash, looked through some books and think I’m heading toward a pieced border, with that stripe as a divider to let those edges glow.  It’s interesting how “of a certain date” these fabrics are, as well as a certain look.  I’m trying for a mellow quilt top here, like the golds and reds and browns of autumn mellow into a beautiful display every year.

But Mother Nature always has a leg up on us, as she paints her fall palate.  I noticed when we were in Canada last month, how much better the Halloweeny/Fall colors looked against a gray sky and the softer contrasts found in the northern autumn light.  All those pumpkins look out of place here in Southern California, with our bright light and the continuous greens of plants and trees.  So it’s no accident that we don’t have “fall” here, at least not until January, when the liquid ambers blaze into brilliant reds, then quickly turn brown and fall off the tree.  So, as I work, I try to keep in mind the atmosphere of Montreal and Quebec City and the small island north of that old city as I work on this quilt.  Luckily it’s supposed to rain tomorrow, which will help me stay focused.

At long last.  After the holiday.  In time for next year:

Binding on and stitched down.  Label is coming. . . later. . .as are most things in my life right now.  We’re in crunch time at school and if you think witches in doorways and skeletons all dressed up going to a party are scary, you haven’t seen midterms and research papers for some time now.  Yesterday the students all dragged in after having taken the fiction exam last week.  They looked, in a word, bedraggled and like that scene in Roger Rabbit where the character is run over by a steamroller.  Only these young adults hadn’t popped back up yet, cartoony-like.  I opened with a few jokes, but really folks, we had more work to do.  My wry comments were followed quickly by a more thorough reading of the Research Paper packet and ideas for drafting.  There’s no way to avoid it–it’s work work work until the end of the semester.

We shifted gears and discussed the play that was assigned to them, as well as the difference between fiction and drama.  I gave them a pop quiz and wrote a condensed version of our final few classes in a modified calendar up on the board.  A few squares, like the quilt above, filled with goblins (essays), research papers (witches), exams and presentations (other scary things).  Finally, one young man spoke up, his voice weary: “It’s nice to know we have a light at the end of this tunnel.”  The ice was broken, everyone laughed, and their spirits rose a bit in order to finish the group projects, get their exams returned (they had all studied hard and did well) and move on out into the crisp California afternoon.

Halloween’s over.  The work continues.  Reading and writing for them, grading for me.  And maybe an hour or few stolen for another quilt project.  Just to keep the goblins at bay.