I received my quilt back from the quilter and stitched on the binding. Foyle’s War, Season Three, was my visual entertainment while I stitched it down. I’ve been using it on my bed at night, and it works really well. The flannel backing keeps it anchored on my bed at night and the lighter weight is perfect for this transitional spring season.
Standard-Rolled-Up-Quilt Shot
While some think it takes courage to climb Mt. Everest (and yes, I agree), it also takes courage to finally open the Lollypop Trees pattern by Kim McLean and admit that yes, it’s time to begin. So I played it safe today. I cut apart the life-size pattern pieces and jotted down where the trees are in the Grand Scheme of Things. You can see my penciled-in numbers in the grid on the right. But before I explode the fabric shelves and get crackin’ here’s some background on this pattern.
This is a published picture of the quilt, circa 1855 from New York State. In the notes they allude to the quilt looking like “Lollipop Trees.” But McLean’s quilt is titled Lollypop Trees, a different spelling. The original is basically done in three colors: an olive green, turkey red and deep green, and a zig-zag border.
McLean’s version. You can see some overlap in the design, which I really like. It’s interesting to have the origins of a quilt paying homage to the past; however, with the use of Kaffe Fasset fabrics, it’s become a different quilt entirely.
Here’s a view without those borders–a twist as well, because of the use of more solid fabrics.
This quilt is huge–nearly queen-sized. Hmmm. My friend Rhonda (who is doing this at the same time) suggests we choose our favorites and made it smaller.
This one is not 16 squares huge, but only 12 squares. I like the use of the circles in the border, apparently a design taken from another McLean quilt. This size gives the punch of the large one, but it more suited to what I want to accomplish.
Spring’s here, and in Southern California that means hot weather has arrived–like in the 80s and 90s. So it’s perfect day to get a call from my quilter. . .
. . . telling me that my Spring/Life’s Alive quilt is all done. This is Cathy of CJ Designs and yes, she’s does mail order and best of all–she’s good and gets things done in a timely fashion. (Leave me a comment if you want her contact info.) The pattern we chose was “Calm Water” for the quilting, and I thought it turned out really well. Here’s some candids of Miss Quilt:
You can really see the quilting pattern there on the flannel backing.
Okay, that’s all until I get the binding on. I may sleep under it tonight, binding or no binding, because even though the days are warm, the nights are still cool-ish and the window fan blows the cool air in from outside all night long. It’s how I’ve managed to enjoy living here, an hour east of Los Angeles. While we still have really hot summers out here, the ocean air floods inland in the evening, cooling things down. We rarely run our A/C at night, unlike the time I lived in Texas, where it ran clock-round for months of the year. My hat is off to you Texans.
Spring also means our Silk Oak Tree gets orangey-yellow new growth on it. The little teeny tiny birds LOVE this stuff, and they snuggle deep into the strange-looking blossoms and wiggle around. I wonder what they smell (I can’t smell anything, but the color is certainly neon-ish).
It also means I just spent a weekend grading research papers from my English Comp class. For some sample lines from the papers that made me weep, I’ve put up a post *here*.
Happy Spring!
A happy day!
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 