What does fall mean?

It’s fall, when — if you live in the Northern States — leaves turn colors and fall off the trees.  Here in Southern California we know it’s fall because all the pumpkin spice food shows up in grocery stores, even though the temps are still in the 80s.

We pretend it’s fall, and serve fall-colored food, like this Carrot Cauliflower Soup, and we’ve gotten out the fall-colored placemat and napkins, and you can bet there are pumpkins on my table.

And if you answered “Christmas!!” in response to the prompt, you — unfortunately — are also correct.  So to take photographs of Frivols #10 finish, done up in a Sweetwater Christmasy line of fabrics, I headed to Costco for the photo shoot.  I’m calling it Christmas Corner, because all those quarter log-cabin shapes remind me of street corners.

Here are the finishing up photos for this little quilt, finishing at 32″ by 36″: arranging the quarter-log cabin square, pinning, then quilting it.  I didn’t have any red fabric for the binding, but in my Christmas bin, found a piece of an earlier Sweetwater Christmas line, and yes–it works quite well.

So I’m tucking and arranging, and a woman comes by and says “They sell quilts at Costco?”  Turns out she’s a quilter (takes one to find one in Costco) and she agreed to hold up the quilt for me next to the ribbons and bows.  I never did find out her name, but we had a great chat about quilting groups, how beginners would be more successful choosing simple quilt designs, the advantages of working with a complete line of fabric in quilts.  It was one of the best conversations I’ve ever had in that giant warehouse store.

Here are couple other photos:

Almost looks as if the snowmen are helping me.  Interestingly enough, aside from the quilter, nobody else thought it was weird that I was taking photos of a quilt…or at least they didn’t say anything. Here are some photos of the quilt in my garden:

Frivols #9, Christmas Corner

I especially like the look of the stack on that last one.

Ten done — two to go — so onto Frivols #11!

I finished Frivols 8, and haven’t yet named it, although Moda calls it “Brio” or something like that.  But all those Bear Paw blocks are so fun and alive, I need another name.  How about…

…Baby Bear?, especially after my daughter-in-law posted this picture of her youngest son (my youngest grandson) helping with dinner, complete with bear earmuffs.  He’s a character.

I finally was able to get to the quilting (see below).

I found some old 1940s prints in the stash, and chose a blue to match the lightest blue in the quilt for the binding.  That’s one of the troubles with doing these frivols after the fact: the fabrics to complete them are AWOL, but I made it work.

Now the requisite Beauty Shots.  The print above is titled “She Will Find What Was Lost,” and is a print by Brian Kershisnik, a favorite of mine.

But since this is your two-for-one post, here’s the intro for Frivols #9, our little box for September.

Look!  No Half-Square Triangles!  Okay, there are some triangles that are snowballed on, and a few Flying Geese, but hooray!  I couldn’t face making another quilt with prints on a white background, even though I do like the look, so the background for this one will be a peach woven-looking print fabric.

This collection is by Lella Boutique.  More info is found on Moda’s Blog.

And in other news this past while:

• survived a “Meet N’Greet” when a young woman rear-ended me in stop-and-go traffic on the freeway.  After spending too many hours on too many phone calls with her insurance company, I called mine, and the car will go in next week to be fixed.  They’ll fight it out later who gets to pay what.
• agonized when I discovered that all the patterns I’d given out in my workshop in August were too small. It was only after a phone call to corporate headquarters for the printing company, and two visits to the local outlet that I discovered what had happened: they had set the button to “Print to Fit” which ALL quilters know means at about 96%.  They graciously printed out new, accurate copies, which I’ll collate and get over to the Guild.  Then I’ll put a paper bag on my head and try to remain incognito.
• created another tiny quilt in order to review a book by Kerry Foster, titled Paint-by-Numbers Quilting.  My day on the Blog Hop is September 24th, and we’re doing a digital giveaway that day, so everyone can enter — US and international quilters.  Check back then.
• rearranged nearly everything upstairs in my house:We swapped the old guest room for the new office, which meant that all my stuff in the old guest room had to go in the hallways and the Master Bedroom, and the old office, and yes, even the bathtub. (I won’t show you the rest of the mess.)

Lately, I wake up every day feeling like I have about 400 things to get done that day, and fall into bed exhausted, having only accomplished a few of the things on my list. I know this soon will end, once my home is back in order, the big projects finished, the trips taken, the car fixed, the weeds pulled, next month’s Frivols finished, and everything crossed off my To-Do list.  Right.