I finished the green quilt top, stitched together the pieces for the back and it’s now at the quilter’s.
I began this one–Christmas Star–last fall (November? October?) in a clear space in my schedule, but it’s taken me until now to finish the top.
Today’s goal is to get the back pieced and get that off to the quilter as well.
I’ve even begun thinking about the other quilts marooned in my quilting closet, those quilts that I bought the fabric for, dreamed up and abandoned for work or family fun. Maybe I can even tackle one or two of those? Don’t want to get too giddy, now.
For those of you who asked about the Daisy quilt in the background, it was last summer’s project.
I’m headed off to give my class their final exam. It’s the last day of class, and we’ll meet once more at their final exam time so the students can see their exams, check their grades. The trend has been to give the finals early–apparently it’s happening in all their classes. I don’t know why the math teachers do it, after all they have scantrons, but the Englishy types give the exams earlier because there’s just so much to correct and grade. Stacks and stacks. Reams and reams. Tons of stuff. Last Sunday I pieced 4 blocks for my friend’s humanitarian quilt project. I cut out 3 1/2″ squares of green fabric, layered two together and stitched two diagonal lines, 1/2″ apart. I cut the square apart between the stitched lines making what’s known in the trade as “half-square triangles.” Here are the squares above.
But I was left with lots of 3 1/2″ squares and I was DONE making triangles. So I started sewing them together, putting a white square in the middle, in hopes of making a new twin-sized quilt for the guest bedroom (we already have one twin-sized quilt–just need another). See below for diagram. My inspiration was the bright pink and orange quilt that I made last summer.
After I grade my stacks and stacks and reams and reams, I’ll get back to this. A nice little respite from the labor-intensive Christmas Star quilt I’ve been working on.
My friend Judy puts a poem up now and again on her blog. I read this on the Christian Science Monitor, and couldn’t resist following in her footsteps.
Flying Baby
A baby sits quietly on his mother’s lap, frightened and calm, weary and curious, beloved – and so – loving. Old ladies struggling with irregular carry-ons spot him like a star on the horizon. Passing by, each one touches the baby’s head with detached and utter affection, sparks of God. – C. Malcolm Ellsworth
On the way to meet my son Chad for lunch, I caught the last of an interview with Ian McEwan on the occasion of his new book, Solar, and heard Mr. McEwan read this snippet:
“He’d been deluded. He’d always assumed that a time would come in adulthood—a kind of plateau—when he would have learned all the tricks of managing, of simply being. All mails and emails answered, all papers in order, books alphabetically on the shelves. Clothes and shoes in good repair in the wardrobes and all his stuff where he could find it. . . the private life settled and serene. In all these years, this settlement, the calm plateau had never appeared. And yet he had continued to assume, without reflecting on the matter, that it was just around the next turn, that he would exert himself and reach it. . . . [About the time his daughter was born] he thought he saw for the first time that on the day he died he would be wearing unmatching socks, there would be unanswered emails, and [at home] there would still be shirts missing cuff buttons, a malfunctioning light in the hall, unpaid bills, uncleared attics, dead flies, friends waiting for a reply. . . “
So Mr. McEwan finally captures the frantic race we all feel to Get Stuff Done, but we rarely achieve that “settlement, that calm plateau” he writes about. That would explain the mess in my study. That would explain why the cracked tiles in my bathroom have not been replaced in three years. That would explain the general overwhelmingness that visits me for for sometimes very lengthy intervals, riding around on my shoulder, a little chirpy voice whispering in my ear while the pen scratches out on paper a list of things that need to be done, no, must be done.
I’ve always had this belief that I can get caught up, and in some places there is a division of labor in my life: the grading will finish, the students will no longer show up in class, the fences will be built, the house will get painted. And then I start believing that this finality will gradually appear in other areas of my life: the quilts all sewn, the closets cleaned out, the floor mopped, the laundry completed.
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 