Bystander, Bifurcated: Home Again

April 10, 2022September 11, 2025 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

Like my life recently, this is a bifurcated post. It has forked, diverged, split, branched, split, zig-zagged and divaricated. First a visual reminder:

Notice anything on this Index in the Year 2022? Nope, me neither.

I went back through my blog, which is a record of sorts, seeing what the heck I’ve been doing. Or not doing.

I have been doing pillow covers, which in a way, are small quilts, so I guess I could add them to the list, but if feels like cheating although January’s (the blue/white one) was more fidgety than some quilts I’ve made.

I chose this remedy: a list. Long ago in a lifetime far away I used to hang with the Finish-A-Long crowd, writing up quarterly lists, etc. Once I got into the habit of finishing, I bowed out. But since the pandemic seems to have scrambled our brains, I thought it was a method of organization worth dredging up again. One of my rules is to hand-draw the chart. At first I could only come up with one, but no worries, everything soon piled on.

I don’t know about you, but there are times when I’m more of a bystander, sometimes torn between two good things, or tasks, or the energy just gave out, or I just want to doom scroll on the phone. We’ve all done a lot of that, but with this break in the pandemic, I was hoping to feel a bit free, hoping to feel like my old self again — with enthusiasm in working my craft.

So I made the list.

Yet, I have been busy.

Started here. 5:00 a.m. Tuesday, March 29. Saw the sunrise after climbing through the Cajon Pass.

We stopped in Arizona, picked up Barbara, stopping for lunch at Viva Chicken in St. George, UT. We arrive in Salt Lake City near 8 p.m. after stopping at Shake Shack for a burger (worth it). My sister Cynthia greeted us and helped us into the place where we were staying. So glad to see her!

Wednesday, March 30. Pre-Op 7:30 a.m. and first time to meet the surgeon. Definitely a Very Nice Surgeon. Then up to JeniBee craft market, where I could have purchased too many things, but so fun to be doing “normal” craft market shopping. With people. I did buy some Ukranian wooden eggs, which took up residence beside Elenor Easterly:

And this little sign, plus a few other treats. Yes, indeed: Live Simply & Bloom Wildly.

Lunch with my sisters, first time we’ve been together in over three years, and our shoes always define us, to some extent.

Dinner that night with my sisters and more family.

Barbara and Barbara. My beautiful daughter is named for my beautiful soon-to-be-94 mother.

Thursday. Report for surgery at 6:15 a.m. My husband remarked that this was not a trip of restful mornings. Barbara (daughter) had been having pain in her hip for some time, and the surgery was to take care of it, but she was to be on crutches for a good 2-3 weeks. We were home by 10:30 a.m. and afternoon was a blur of bad pain meds, runs to pharmacy, finding food that will stay down, ice packs and then, “Can we go home tomorrow?” An okay from her doctor and we changed plans yet again.

Originally we were to be up there one week. No, two weeks. Really maybe only 4 or 5 days. I packed enough craft projects for two weeks, but in the end, they never left the car.

Friday, April 1. Up too early, but we were out the door fairly efficiently, having done most of the packing up the night before. We had to stop every two hours to give her a chance to crutch around a bit, and just as we rounded the corner to her home in Arizona, I feel something like a sigh come from Barbara. Then my husband said something like “We’ll be heading off here pretty quickly.” I thought we were staying for a couple of days, but as I said to him earlier in the week, I’ve figured out to make plans that can be changed. We did.

Friday, dusk. We and billions of trucks head to the Cajon Pass, driving through the Mojave Desert. Last time we drove through here we saw Elon Musk’s Starlink Satellites, a subway train of lights in the sky. Not tonight.

We slept for the next three days. Sort of kidding. Barbara is making her way through post-op. She will recover.

This photo of Barbara & Barbara was taken five years ago, before my mother lost her eyesight. Glad to have a new one.

And next Sunday — Easter Sunday — Part Four of Heart’s Garden will drop, and we’ll plant our garden.

And then there’s this.

Since we were taking Barbara to Utah for surgery, and we were supposed to stay at my sister Susan’s home for several days afterwards, I looked at her change of address card, and decided to make her a little housewarming gift using those motifs.

I drew up the basic idea in my Affinity Designer software, using brushes from Artifex Forge to make the trees. I copied, mirrored them on either side of the house, changing the colors slightly.

I backed a homespun-looking piece of cloth with freezer paper, and ran it through the printer. (I use EPSON printers because I like their inks.) I use the same technique in making quilt labels.

I fused on the house (she has grey rock in the front of hers), the roof, chimney and front door.

Susan mentioned that her landscaper was going to put in a perennial garden out front. She has a sliver of a front planting bed, but I wanted to add that, too.

I sketched in the dimension with pencil, then marked evenly around the outer upper edges. Using masking tape as a guide, I hand quilted rays of sunshine emanating from her new house, hopefully wishing her happiness.

I trimmed it, bound it in some of my current favorite fabric, and sewed on a hand-written label.

Happy New House, Susan.

While the original plan was to stay with Susan, our daughter Barbara took one look at the stairs up to the guest bedroom and worried about getting up all those stairs on her crutches. So that’s why we headed home early.

We’ve seen many pictures of refugees lately, people leaving their homes to escape conflict, destruction, fleeing for safety, for their future. I feel incredibly sad for these people. Our church congregation works with some of the Afghan refugees here; this past week my husband drove them to a dentist’s appointment, and helped assemble bunkbeds for children (he’s a saint). There is so much to do when they come to a new home: find a place to live, find furniture, household goods, acquaint them with our community, help them. I have forgotten what it’s like to start again, in a new place. But my hope is that one day, when all the displaced walk through their new front doors, they too will say: Home Again.

Quilts

The Tale of the Chess Bag

April 3, 2022September 11, 2025 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

It all began when summer weather came early, and summer weather always calls for a summer purse. The Chess Bag was a kit I picked up at Road to California from a booth run by By Hands, USA. I’ve purchased from them many times (I have yet to make the Totoro Bag I picked up in the Before Times, but is no longer sold).

The kit also appealed to me because they sewed up the hard part for me: all those teeny chess board squares. I thought the back looked as good as the front.

I quilted the chessboard squares to batting, but it was too floppy, so then I quilted the whole thing to ByAnnie’s Soft and Stable, which gave it more body. I did parallel lines, but had to raise the quilting shank because it was so thick.

I used some scraps from the kit and made two interior pockets. Can’t have a summer purse without pockets!

I love the silvery color of the background against the russets, deep greens and blues in these fabrics.

I couldn’t sew on the handles as neatly as she did, so appliquéd on some squares to cover up the mess.

The End!

Quilting Techniques

Confessions of a former FPP Hater

March 27, 2022September 11, 2025 Elizabeth E.16 Comments

Newly arrived in a bee in 2013, this was my first attempt at foundation paper-piecing, or FPP for short.

The Queen Bee had sent the fabric in graduated-sizes of strips; the cloth was finite which made me stress even more. This is what I wrote that day:

“Seventy-two pieces per block (4 quadrants). It took me over 7 hours, closer to eight hours, to finish the two blocks. I began wondering about this quilter–who would send out such a complicated block to the bee and expect us to do not only ONE, but TWO blocks? I began wondering about what a sheep I was to follow along, when I should have just sent back the unused fabric after the first block and the scraps for the little triangles, and kept it to one.”

I was pretty grumpy, and no, I don’t hate that quilter (she’s amazing). But I decided right then to hate all FPP and avoid those blocks whenever I could. In the double flying geese block, it was the figuring out how to gauge the size of what you needed to cut and how to arrange it so it covered the piece, all without running out of fabric. Whenever someone in one of my bees would bring up FPP, I shuddered and knew I would pretty much fail at this technique.

So why did I sign up for not one, but TWO, FPP classes at QuiltCon? Because I had because I’d seen this on Instagram:

This quilt won First in Piecing and Viewer’s Choice. Before going to Phoenix, I had even tried to give away this class; it was right after my finger injury and I couldn’t even write, let alone handle the mess that was FPP. To compensate, I swapped out her pattern for a smaller one of my choosing, the Lizabeth from Karen Ackva. I also knew that if your project is smaller, you’ll get more done. Instead of being out of sorts about my swap, the teacher at QuiltCon, Verushka Zarate of Pride and Joy Quilting, was always kind, polite, cheerful and called us “friends” throughout the class. She even started the class with us telling a joke–not everyone had one–so the day was off to a great start. Her demos were helpful, and she explained everything really well, and constantly walked around to make sure we were not drowning in FPP.

At one point, she mentioned her Online Class, and I perked up. It would be great to be able to follow up and have that resource. More about that in a minute.

I finished the head, the skirt, the neck in class. Here’s the rest:

I chose this pattern for its size (5″ wide) and because of the name (Lizabeth).

I also took Cassandra Beaver’s class at night, where she demo-ed on a light table. She went step by step and these two classes together really made a difference. (Plus I’ve been Cassandra’s fangirl for a while.)
This was her pattern:

I fixed the eye with a little reverse appliqué this week, changing from white (oops) to black.

I had ordered a different kind of roller, one made of hard rubber, and I liked it because it was flat and really set the creases. Cassandra gave everyone in her class pair of flowered tweezers, and I already had the fine tipped tweezers. Both work well for extracting the paper, which I’m still not so fond of, but I’ve gotten better.

Normal life after FPP. I use vellum paper when printing out my patterns, and it’s crisp and tears off really easily. It’s sturdy and slightly transparent, which also helps.

Today I found some time and watched portions of her online class. It sells for $45 and it is so helpful! (This is Verushka.)

She has the segments well-labeled and you work with the pattern we did at QuiltCon, which covers a wide range of FPP challenges. She has the BEST TIPS EVER for figuring out how to cut the correct shape of fabric to cut for the piece you are working on, and how to position your FPP so you’ll never get turned around. (I didn’t share them here, because they are her tips.)

I have seen the light.

I no longer hate FPP. I’m not like some people who Absolutely Love It, but I’m making progress. I even designed a leaf signature block for my Gridster Bee month:

I feel like I’m getting the hang of this, and have become a new ~~woman~~ quilter.

Last week I had a giveaway, and it took me too long to get responses to you–but they were all so lovely and so like poetry, I was determined to write you back. Susan won the pattern and it will be on the way to her soon. Thank you all for sharing with me your idea of “poems” to help smooth away the weariness.

A long time ago–showing me her first sewing project (a doll)

This next little while I’ll be assisting my grown daughter with her surgery in another state — my husband and I picking her up in a third state, driving her to surgery, helping with convalescence and then after a few days, driving her back home again. (All the details for that have kept me a bit preoccupied in the correspondence department.) I’ve got some EPP for the long road trip, and even a stitchery that is about 25 years old.

Happy ~~Quilting~~ FPP-ing–

Giveaway · Heart's Garden · Something to Think About

Writing Poetry

March 20, 2022September 13, 2025 Elizabeth E.25 Comments

The famous and prolific writer Joyce Carol Oates was once asked,
“What do you do when you finish a novel?”
“I’m spent,” she said. “Can’t write another word of fiction. So I turn to writing poetry.”

Late Friday night, I finished stitching on the final border of the Heart’s Garden Mystery QAL (the slice of pink in the picture below). I sunk down into my sewing room chair, took a couple of photos and went to bed.

The next morning, her quip — about poetry — began boinking around in my head. I started my day by cleaning up my sewing space: emptying bins, throwing away junk-that-accumluates, vacuuming crevices and window frames. Then my husband came in and asked me to go out to lunch with him.

We happened on our town’s Saturday morning market and bought vegetables, a perfect tray of strawberries, and lunch at the local deli.

We ate outside on the plaza, escaping before the BoJangles Man set up with his amplifier, microphone and guitar.

We walked down the pedestrian mall and shared a Crème Brûlée donut complete with a crackling sugar top.

We wandered into Mrs. Tiggywinkle’s shop, and came out with this small Elenor Easterly figurine by Lori Mitchell. I sometimes find that aimless wandering and buying tchotchkes can often help a Mood.

Back home, I finished cleaning up. But I kept thinking about poetry. I used to write poetry, and was once Poet Laureate for University of California-Riverside as an undergraduate. I do have times when I hop onto Poetry Daily and just read for a while, sometimes typing in a search keyword but other times, just reading at random. It’s also great for quilt titles, if you need them.

I think, with poetry, there is an assumed connection between the external life and the interior life–one is linked to the other in a reciprocal relationship. But I feel that as well with creative or quilting projects. How I’m feeling internally will affect what I do externally, and if I’m exhausted or unsettled or wrung out, I have to deal with this. However, sometimes that creative connection is automatic — and I have to try to shut it down to relax (like wanting to take a photo of the table because it looked like it could be a quilt design or something.)

Oates’ poetry allowed her to keep creating, yet still leave the scene of her most arduous work. One example of this that we know all too well is our past two years which has kept us immersed in a strange world; many of us turned to our creative connection to help keep ourselves sane. We have all spent our two years chipping away at the gloom while trying to stay mentally and physically healthy. More than once I’ve wondered how my grandmother got through the 1918 flu, but she didn’t write about it. We’ve obviously found tiny slivers of poems (in the abstract sense) to help us — a child’s drawing, a phone call, or just taking a walk — things that can bring us back to ourself.

So after thinking about it, here were my poems for today:

I created a clean space.
I admired the completed quilt top Heart’s Garden on the design wall.
I created a space for me to listen the jet that roared through the skies, shaking our home, its contrails like two steaming taillights.
I opened the window to feel the breeze.

I let myself rest.
I let myself empty out.

Saturday afternoon, I sat at my neatened desk and read poetry, then copied and pasted two poems in below; hope you have time to glance at them.

And…I have already found two quilts that intrigue me, here and here.

I took a look at the quilt I started at Road, and thought I’d like to make some more blocks. I do have one extra pattern from that day, and will send it to someone, if you are interested. To enter to win the pattern, please tell me what your “poetry” is when you are wrung out–how do you restore yourself…to yourself? How do you replenish that creative urge? How do you find your way back to creating again after a long project?

Leave me a comment below!

Happy Quilting!

Links, etc.

That’s a statue of Eliza Tibbets up there in the collage, with her skirts flowing. Tradition has it that when the first batch of navel orange seedlings arrived in the United States from Brazil, she persuaded the Plant Importation Program to give her some. They sent two, and they flourished — so the story goes — because she watered them with her dishwater. (She really didn’t look like that, but I still love that statue.)

Poetry Foundation, where you can read poems daily, and from where I pulled the following two poems.
I also like Poetry.com for reading poems.

My mother has gone blind over the last decade, but she sewed intricate needlepoint canvases. All three of my sisters and I worry about losing our sight. After reading this poem, I should probably take up crocheting.

poem is from the September 1918 issue of Poetry, *from here*

This poem is haunting, reflecting our world today, but instead of pink roses, we stitch blue and yellow patchwork. Armistice Day for World War I was a month later: November 11, 1918.