Come A-Round – Page 5 – OccasionalPiece

No, not six quilts. That wouldn’t be normal, would it.

Six dotty circles!!

I was kind of commenting on how many pieces it takes to my quilty pal, Rhonda, who lives on the Other Coast.

Three arcs per 1/4 block. Eleven pieces on the larger outside arc, eleven pieces (smaller) on the second arc, and 4 on the center quarter-circle arc. One hundred and four pieces per block. I haven’t even put the four pieces on the outside of the circles to square it up. And this is only the center section.

Well, the truth is I was kind of moaning a wee bit to Rhonda, as it seems to go sooo slowly. But she noted that “It’s also theraputic, isn’t it?” She’s right. I can listen to the radio, to podcasts, to novels (my mother and I are listening to Things Fall Apart), and just let my mind wander and stitch. She called me this morning to tell me she’d dragged her dotty circles quilt pieces out of the closet and had started to work on them again. I loved the coincidence that I was working on something that she’d already started–great serendipity.

The repetitive motion allows me to think about Gabby Giffords, the tragedy there, the speeches, and how I fit into the equation of more civil conversation. I don’t really traffic in the political sphere, so it doesn’t affect me directly, but I can practice not rolling my eyes when someone I’m not crazy about is speaking on the TV, or listen more carefully, expanding my “moral imaginations” as President Obama suggested. I should do these things not just because it’s a good idea, but also because as these dotty circles suggest, what goes around, comes around. And I want good things to come back around to me.

Okay, compared to Red Pepper, I’m awfully slow. She gets a quilt done in a day, it seems, but here’s what I’ve been able to do in a few days. Two almost-done wheels! Yay–only 10 more to go. I originally thought there were sixteen wheels, but no, only twelve. That suits me fine.

You know that old adage about how what we quilters do is take perfectly good fabric, cut it into small pieces just so we can sew it up again? That idea has played through my mind more than once, as I’ve worked on this quilt.

Here’s the board of pieces that I keep next to the sewing machine, painstakingly trying to be random when choosing. The little machine–the Featherweight–has been pressed into service for this one. I like my bigger electronic machine, but there’s a different connection to the fabric and the process when I use this tiny sewing machine. It’s just me, the belts and gears and all those little pieces of fabric.

Okay, the one downer will be when I have to peel all the paper off the backs of these arcs at the end, but Becky Goldsmith and Linda Jenkins of Piece O’ Cake Designs (who designed this quilt) said to use parchment paper. So I went down to my local Kelly Paper store and bought a ream, choking on the price. But I really dislike peeling paper off of paper-pieced quilts, so I was ready to try their recommendation.

This quilt is from the book Quilts with a Spin, and is on sale now at their website. Yes, I see all that applique on the outside of the quilt. This must be my applique year. The other night at quilt night we were discussing how chaotic our lives seemed to be, and I mentioned that this coming year was the Year of the Rabbit on the Chinese calendar. To a woman, they all said they were ready for a year of calm and quilt, a rabbit-like year. Maybe that’s why I’ve inadvertently chosen applique quilts this year–calm, quiet–sewing on my applique while I stream down something from Netflix on our AppleTV.