Annie Dillard, in The Writing Life, says “how we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and that one is what we are doing.”
It was a hard week, with me unable to sleep one of the nights and in the wee hours, I tried reading until exhaustion. I tried the cup of hot chocolate in a darkened kitchen, looking out at the city lights in the distance. I tried going back to bed and pretending to sleep. I tried designing a quilt, for they are like putting together puzzles and couldn’t that make me sleepy?
I tried more reading until my brain couldn’t focus, then tears and exhaustion and the just worn-out-from tryingness slid me into slumber. I slept in until 9 a.m. when my husband, always the golden light in very dark hours, went with me on a short walk, but it was enough. It was a way to spend an hour that seemed a good way to spend a life. He talked to me about a difficult group meeting I’d had the night before, with hard realizations about my limitations. We talked through all the slights, the snubs, the hurts — the usual sort of stuff that happens when a group of 80 different women get together. We talked about who the true friends were. We walked and talked.
I spent the day in idleness, quiet. We had a simple lunch.
Then in the late light of the afternoon, I picked up this and sewed it together.
Then this. And then it was dinner. When I talked, my voice wavered. Speech can sometimes be too hard. Better to go back to the quiet of stitching. And of course there are always about fourteen things converging all at once: broken expectations of my place in an organization, lingering sorrows from family deaths, missing people who I love, failed assumptions and so on: a heady list. I’m sure you’ve been here. Bad days come for everyone.
In an article I wandered across, I found this comment:
“l’ve gradually come to believe grief is not an episodic event with a beginning and an end, but something indistinguishable from life itself. We may have a brief time in our youth where grief is not part of our daily lives. But otherwise, as humans, we eat, work, sleep and grieve. Grief is not something from which we recover, it’s not a mental illness. It’s as much a part of life as breathing. We are born, and ultimately, we spend our lives letting go. If we are fortunate, we will find moments of joy.”
I returned to myself the next day. I put on a novel and sewed, making space only for the creating, the stitching, the people in the book in my ears, the welcome interruptions from my husband, a simple meal. A luxury, for sure. And after a time, I arrived at this:
Blooming, New York Beauties Block Five. A happy ending of sorts, I think. That scrambled night still needs to be dealt with, as does grief, as do phone calls, and missing phone calls, and doctor appointments, and grocery shopping — all hours that may not make it into a novel, but are my life. The mellow light from this block eased me through a bump (or two) in the road, and I’m ready to go again.
Below are the photos, because by now, you know the drill for the freezer paper construction and if you don’t, scan through the rest of the posts.
I am still failing in many ways in my life, but I am also succeeding. Sometimes the hours spent look like sand slipping through my fingers. Other hours bring me this: intervals of joy.
Are we there yet? millions of traveling children must have asked, as the miles piled up. And maybe you are asking if we are done yet with these New York Beauties blocks. Not yet, the happy mother from the seat said. Or maybe after traveling in the arid West with no air conditioning, she wasn’t quite so happy. My sister, Susan Rugh, wrote this book about the golden age of traveling across America — all of us in cars, but probably no seat belts. I love showing off her work (available here).
The schedule of our blocks is up on this page, and we are getting there. Really we are. But I chose to do a more intricate one this time around, which leaves mostly easier blocks at the end. Actually, Hopeful, is one of my more favorite blocks, as I like the twisting effect around one of the outer bands. And that red sun-like center is actually not quite so red, but most cameras struggle to photograph red colors, if you hadn’t noticed.
I like to start with building the semi-circles of rays. This post will give you tips and tricks for making this this block (pattern available here). Cut out around the outer black dashed lines, and then figure out your colors. You can see my penciled-in numbers on the rays (C1 and C2 have a soft green background; B1 and B2 have a white background, so no numbering there).
This girl watches over all my Foundation Paper Piecing. I learned in a class from Verushka Zarate (she is coming to Road 2025!) and I made this girl in that class. Underneath her you can see I’ve clipped swatches and numbered them, from 1 to 7, and then I went a little further and cut ray shapes (I only need three of each) and pinned them below. You can pin a length of fabric underneath, if you don’t want to cut a shape of fabric.
Take time to fold them both on the line, and then reverse direction on the line (hope that makes sense).
I iron down the first bit, then lay the second fabric underneath, making sure to keep the fold like this for a second. I’m checking to make sure that Section 8 will fit on the underneath white fabric. It will.
I sewed that, trimmed it, pressed it, and now moving on to Section 9, again making sure that the blue behind is as large as the next section.
Reminder: stitch along the folded edge of the freezer paper.
Here I’m doing the larger rays, and the same process is the same: fold back the freezer paper so you can see the needed shape. I went ahead cut some ray shapes the needed size before I started, but I most often will just put a hunk of fabric back there.
I usually sew a couple of these sections at a time.
With all the sections sewn (1) they look kind of globby, but trimming them up (2) makes them look neat. I’m prepping in image 3 to join them together, carefully and s l o w l y pulling back the freezer paper. If you rip it off quickly, you are liable to pop your seams. Pin the units together (4) and you are rolling.
Yeah. Whoops.
I used the wrong color. Those who read this blog know that I would probably just leave it, as in the final quilt, it won’t be noticed. But leaving it now…on the first block…while you all are watching? No.
I picked the section apart and cut an exact replica in the correct fabric, weird angles and all.
Better.
And with that, block 12, Hopeful, is completed. Please make three.
There are many more tricks for freezer paper sewing on the other blog posts about these blocks. You can find them listed in order on my New York Beauties page, above. Apparently I’m supposed to make two of these blocks in June; I guess I got in a rush. One more is coming and it’s Block 5: Blooming.
And yes, you are allowed to second-guess yourself on your colors, but you are not encouraged to get stuck. I’d probably make that center sun part a little pinker, than redder, but as you can see in the image below…it’s really just fine.
Eight blocks finished. Four to go. And one bonus, if you want to make one.
This picture illustrates my vexation. On the left, and using the color swatches in the top row, is Version 1 of this block. Not happy with how the ombre effect worked out, I tried Version 2 of this block (on the right), using the color swatches in the bottom row. So, first, color broke my brain.
Color
I’d envisioned this block to be a representation of that time in the evening when everything is settling down, with glowing shades of pink and yellow and deeply colored purple. On the left in the background of the rays, you can see that range of hues goes just so far. Then there is a huge color jump from the light pinks to that dark coral at the far left. Likewise in Version 2 on the right, there is a progression from soft yellows to corals and pinks, then another color jump at the end. I faced that sort of thing ages ago when I made Annularity. I ended up making two of these quilts:
Do you spot the anomaly in color? It’s at the very bottom, the warm-lavender diamond just to the left of center. That quilt went to Paintbrush Studio, because it was made from their first drop of their solids line. In the version on the right, made for myself, I pulled the exact blue-lavender color from another solids line that I needed to make the transition flow smoothly.
This is because we live in a world with limitations. And fabric colors, especially in solids, are one of those things. The fabric line, my favorite — Painter’s Palette by Paintbrush Studios — has since fixed that awkward color jump and they now have a perfect blue-lavender.
But now there’s a jump in the pinky coral tones. But I’m really giving this fabric line a workout: I’m creating color in my Affinity Designer program, using sliders and sampling colors from photos to get the exact color that I want in my designs. But the fabric manufacturers are working with cloth, dye, finishes, and budgets and no, they can’t make every color. (This is why I believe some people dye their own fabrics — just to get that precise color they want. But I decided long ago not to go down that road.) If this really bugs me, I may just buy it from another line, but I will be sure to prewash it twice to try and mimic what I have (both for colorfastness — the PPSolids are incredibly colorfast) and to shrink up the weave a little (PPSolids have a tight weave with a nice hand, or feel, to the cloth). Who am I kidding? I’ll just use what I’ve got.
Technique
And the other reason I was struggling is technique, or “how I sewed it.” In that Version 1, above, if you use your critical eye you can see that the narrow green band seems more “lumpy” that the one on the right. When I was majoring in Clothing and Textiles at Brigham Young University (a major no longer offered), we had to make a wool suit. Our teacher had worked in the industry and precision was her specialty. I resewed the lower front corner of my jacket with its sloping curve from center front to hem probably four times, but in the end she still gave me a B. She wrote on my grading sheet that she knew I worked hard on it, but it still wasn’t as smooth as needed.
It wasn’t necessarily my skillset that wasn’t up to succeeding, it was my technique. I needed to slow down. We all are familiar with this feeling when we finish the center of a quilt and then its borders. Borders? And we throw on just something, and then it’s quilting, and then it’s the binding, which apparently many people don’t like. They just want to Be Done.
So I slowed way down in my sewing of the narrow bands on the Version 2 block. Pressing carefully, using a different order of construction, improving my technique as I went.
This is not a hard block. So choose your colors carefully, use your best techniques in sewing, and it will go well. That’s all I wanted to say on this, but I do include my tips and tricks for the block and sewing it together below.
This is what my cutting table usually looks like, however I crop out the mess when I post photos, to keep the distraction level down. There’s a free pattern for Block One in my PayHip shop, where you can also pick up the patterns for all the blocks. Don’t forget to look at the other posts about this quilt, all found on the Master New York Beauties page.
Thanks for reading, and good luck with your colors and technique, in whatever you are stitching–
Tips and Tricks for Block 10: Vespers
Many other of the New York Beauties posts give you specific instructions on how to make that ray section; feel free to look at them for more help. We now pick it up after the parts are ready to be assembled. Please read all the way through before beginning.
Arrange the pieces so you’ll pin the INSIDE curve of the rays to the OUTSIDE edge of the narrow curved band. The Cereus block (9) discusses this. Divide the ray section and the small upper band into four sections, marking with pins, or finger pressing. Pin.
Sew a scrap, and at the edge, line up the two pieces to sew. I use a clay tool (the handle is nice and big) but you can also use a stiletto. Keeping the right-hand edges aligned, S L O W L Y stitch 1/4-inch away from the edge, easing in the fullness as you go. Remove pins as you go. To be truthful, It’s easier to put the concave on the bottom (the curving-out piece), but I think I flipped it for this photograph. The post on Cereus shows what I mean.
Press the band away from the rays.
Now we’ll attach the corner quarter-circle. Again, divide the edge into fourths. And made sure you are sewing the INSIDE edge of the narrow curved band to the outside curved edge of the quarter-circle.
All pinned up. The purple (convex side) will be placed next to the feed dogs:
Again, I use a scrap to get started. I nudge those two edges on the right together with my clay tool and sew in a quarter-inch seam, slowly.
I like dimension in my blocks, so that seam is pressed under the quarter-circle. (I’m sure you’ve noticed the pieced wedge in the center. My order from Keepsake Quilting hadn’t arrived when I was making this sample.)
Readying the next joining: outer narrow band to the lower edge of the rays.
Preparing the last seam: narrow band to outside corner. All those curved edges have bias, with the grain on the outer edges because I cut them like this:
All finished. In every step I took my time, keeping a good technique and not rushing.
Trimming is keeping several balls in the air at once, juggling them all.
First thing to check: your center. Make sure that diagonal line is as close to center of that center ray as you can get.
Next, go for the bright green arrows, seeing if you can get the outer edge of that band as close to 9 1/4″ as you can. On both sides.
Last, and only if you can, the bright blue arrows are asking you to see if the inner narrow band measurements are the same. Or similar.
Then trim off the excess. I designed the pattern so you would have some “play” on that outer edge.
Okay, that’s all for this block. Make 3. Will I use both blocks? Probably. In our lively quilt, I don’t think anyone will object:
I put them both up in our progress chart, and they are fine. This is all to say that if you make one and want to make a shift in colors of the same block, it will be fine. There’s another double-colored block up there now!
If you say “Cereus” it sounds like “Sirius” which is a legit star in our heavens. And if you spell it slightly differently — like Cerus (which I think it was started out to be) — that is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. But no, it’s Cereus, which is a night-blooming cactus, usually only for one night. Most all the names of these New York Beauties have a name related to light or the sun, but this one is related to the moon — when it shines, the cereus flowers open up and bloom.
I start, as always, by layering up the fabrics. I use Painters Palette Solids, by Paintbrush Studios, and since two of our fabric shops have closed recently, I purchase them from Keepsake Quilting online. I have updated the colors chart online, where you can find this pattern. The colors chart is a free print-out: find the Preview Icon just underneath the buttons for purchasing, and you can download it to get the colors I used for the blocks. Since we are doing the blocks bit by bit, I’ll update them as we sew.
From Left to Right: Section 1 is ironed onto the purple, paper is folded back and like Photo 2, we are ready to sew that seam just to the wide of the fold of the freezer paper. In Photo 3, I trimmed it a little narrower than 1/4″ wide, maybe somewhere between an 1/8″ and a 1/4-inch. I have many seams on this section, so I don’t want a lot of huge seam allowances clogging up the works. But this is the only section that is pieced, making Cereus a quick block to make.
I have become completely besotted with the freezer paper method. Some quilters are using regular paper, dabbing glue on it, and continuing as if it were freezer paper, but I’ll put up with the prep work as I like how the freezer paper adheres well as I’m working. Plus I’m not a fan of glue (but maybe that’s because I worked on the collage fruits quilt in between sewing this block, and…ugh).
I lift the folded edge between section 1 and section 2 and iron the fabric toward the dark, then lay it down and iron section 2 onto the fabric. There are many tips on the other blocks I’ve sewn; a complete listing is here, at the tab at the top of the blog. But you can count on the freezer paper lasting for about 4-5 times of use.
Here I just press the freezer paper section straight over onto the fabric.
And here again, I lift the fold, slip the seam allowances under the paper, and press into place.
One trimmed up.
Both trimmed up.
Fold back the sections at the ends, and pin to join the C1 and the C2 pieces together. Make sure you don’t sew the paper anywhere (fold the bits of it out of the way if needed).
Press and there you are!
I always place the C-curve shape on top with the reverse-C-shape on the bottom. The correct term is the Convex on the bottom, and the Concave (now backwards as it is right sides together…and looks like a “C”) on the top. I mark it into sections with pins, match those up, and sew slowly, nudging the edges into place.
I was sewing these on the weekend that the Northern Lights came really low on the hemisphere, during the recent magnetic sun storms. When I stepped outside to see if we had any, alas, we were too low on the globe. I have really enjoyed all the photos I’ve seen of them. I saw the Northern Lights when I was a child, but it’s too far back in the memory bank for me to have any recollection. So I’ll just have to continue with these!
Six blocks mock-up.
How I pressed the different arcs. I like dimension in my quilts.
We need three blocks, but I made four…just because it looks really fun this way. Enjoy making Cereus!
Yes, I’m a bonafide freezer paper enthusiast. Remember this one? When I about lost my marbles with that outside edge? (although I like the block a lot). Hurry if you want to sign up and get all their blocks — it ends in June.) I printed out the remaining blocks on my freezer paper, and will tackle those soon.
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 