Category: Quilts

Books · Quilts · Sewing

Quilting Organically

Elizabeth E.2 Comments

Not quilting with organic fabric.  I was thinking more along the lines of a quilt that just sort of evolves from one stage to the next, getting stalled, then moving forward again.  But Quilting Evolutionarily (is that a word?) just sounded like it was heading somewhere different.  Often I feel the pressure to rush things–you know, to Get-It-Done so I can have something to show off to everyone in the blogosphere.  Because why would anyone want to read about my humdrum, inch-by-inch progress in my projects?  Only because that’s probably how things are going for many of us, especially at the holidays, when we are pulled too many directions.

So, after I put the blue borders on my wonky log cabin, it sat.  Then after finishing the grading, the finals, I actually had a night when I was waiting for my husband to come home from a trip back East, and I wanted to stay up and I had a good novel going, so I was ready to sew.

Forgive the blurry picture–it was at night.  I sewed white strips onto the blue borders.  I also had a stack of “middles” without the blue borders (I’d run out of fabric).  I added red strips to those, and then green.

And then I alternated them up on the pinwall. And there they’ve been for a few days now, while I try to figure out the next step.  They are all different sizes, so I’m trying to decide which ones to cut down, and to which ones I should add a deep blue strip or two in order to get them to become roughly the same size.

The novel I’m listening to is Moon Over Manifest and it’s written for a bit younger crowd; I’m still really enjoying it as it combines two periods of history in the story of the twelve-year-old protagonist.  I’m considering it for my English class next semester: since the main character is 12, I don’t have to worry about inappropriate romantic entanglements that I’d have to deal with in class discussions.  I’m teaching a developmental class (one below Freshman Comp) so this level might be appropriate to most of their reading skills.

So, not that anyone’s reading with a week left until Christmas, and Hanukkah just beginning, and the general rush rush of buying gifts and decorating and baking, but I am making progress on this quilt.  It’s interesting to sew without a plan.  I’m sewing just for the pleasure of it, just to discover what will unfold — the kind of sewing I need right now.

Quilts · Something to Think About

Leaving the Grading Galaxy

Elizabeth E.1 Comment

I’ve been in the Grading Galaxy for the last three days.  It was a pretty arduous trip this time.

This top paper had over 50 errors.  Which made me really cranky.  Chocolate helped as did a whining phone call to a colleague, who had just finished her trip to the Grading Galaxy last week and had another stack to grade (she has one more class than I do, which puts her into saintly territory).

But last night, after I entered in the last grade and said to myself that I’d do the prep for Monday’s class—much, much later—my colleague sent me an email saying look what I’ve been working on!

And she’d sewn 9 squares of her Christmas quilt.  Inspired by her, I started working on the centers to my Square on Square quilt, and this morning I finished them up.

I did have a flash picture, but I prefer the warm glow of no flash, even though you are all squinting and saying things about my photography skills.  Now on to the vacuuming, and if I finish that and the bathrooms, I’ll work on the rusty red triangles, working my way toward that one completed square on the right.

My daughters says her favorite months are the “bers.”  That’s September, October, November and December.  It’s those months of the year when we plan things, give things, change is always in the air (although more for those in colder climes than for us SoCal folks).  It’s a time of anticipation, of making Christmas gifts (I’m already seeing early birds in the blogosphere working on them), of remembering that first day of school, or funny Halloween costumes, or when the turkey didn’t cook, and when the newest baby was there for opening presents under the tree.

It’s such a rich time, these “bers,” and like my daughter, I look forward to them every year and am sad when they go.  I remember my mother telling me a story about my grandmother.  My grandmother had been a school teacher for many many years but then finally retired.  And every fall when she’d hear the school bell toll, she wished she were there, back in the classroom, greeting students.  My father is a teacher, as is my husband, and my sister.  Teaching runs in our blood, so even though I may have been cranky about students who want me to do their work of finding the errors, I am happy that this September found me in a classroom.  And that October will find me making a fall quilt and seeing fall foliage up in Canada.  And November has me in New York with my daughter, and we’ll meet my son and see a Broadway show and the Ground Zero memorial.  And hopefully, if all goes well and there’s no major health crisis (I always get sick in November), by December I’ll be putting the final touches on my newest Christmas quilt, welcoming the holiday spirit to our home.

I hope you enjoy the “bers.” It all begins today.  It all begins now.

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