My husband very graciously held up ColorWheel Bloom for me this morning, as it simply melted into my usual place of the design wall in my sewing studio/room. I like the bright rainbow of colors framed by the sawtooth points and the breathing space given to all of that by the white borders. A happy juncture.
Now the nightmare begins. How to quilt this thing?
After three days of sewing non-stop, except for the time when I went out to Costco to buy vegetables, or the time I took to talk on the phone to my mother and others, I finished the quilt top for Santa’s Village. (My apologies if you heard the sewing machine whirring along while we talked.) Pattern Plusses: the very cute Santa in the middle. Pattern Minuses: the directions that needed to go to about 20 more pattern testers before they released it to the public. I’ll have an errata sheet later on, when I’m not bonkers from sewing.
This is where I started this morning. Only I think I only had one side on the roofs of the houses. Hard to remember.
Houses and trees done and arranged. I’m tired, but I press on. I want to be done with the quilt top before I stop.
Oh, and Friday I finished up Leanne’s quilt blocks for the Always Bee Learning Bee. And finally the weather started to turn from the near 90-degree weather on Thursday to something more respectably autumn-like. At her house in Canada, Leanne had snow. Shoveling snow can make you tired.
I became even more tired when I called for reservations at The Fancy Restaurant for Thanksgiving and was told they were already booked up. (All of our children and their families are scattered to in-laws or other, and this is just not the year to cook.) But the Other Restaurant in the moderately fancy chain hotel has a buffet, and it’s not booked up. Now I can spend time in the sewing room, giving thanks for Santa being finished. Or. . . maybe quilting him, before and after our Thanksgiving feast. I used to be a purist, never going out on the holiday because I remember when my son had to work on Thanksgiving and I was ticked off about him not being at the table with family. Funny how things change as you age. My apologies if your son has to work at the local restaurant because little old ladies are too tired to cook. (And PS, I’m not shopping at Target that day, nor WalMart, nor any of the other stores who are open that day. I do have my limits. . . and my inconconsistencies.)
When you are this tired, it’s good to trim the HSTs leftover from the roofs, and start playing around. It’s good to have a piecing marathon behind me as on Monday, papers come in, and on Tuesday, I teach my class on the Pleated Tote at Bluebird Quilts (our LQS), and I need to make samples on how to easily make a zipper pocket in the lining. I loved teaching the last class there and am looking forward to this one.
Happy Sewing!
At the Bandstand, Under a Starry Night, front
I’ve written about this quilt on this blog before, where I referred to it as Hunter’s Star, a description of the block. But now it is finished, binding and all, and has a new name: At the Bandstand, Under a Starry Night.
I’ve done a couple of “under the starry night” experiences this past week, and there’s also been some bandstanding, or music. The photo above is of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, where they have an LED art installation, The Bay Lights, which makes patterns with fish swimming across the bridge, clouds, waves, shooting lines, sparkly doodads and all sorts of patterns. We drove up to San Francisco to see this, as it’s only here for two years.
And here’s The City’s lights, with the Ferry Building in the foreground. I had first made this quilt for my youngest son’s college quilt. He was enamored of music of all kinds, acquiring the nickname of Audioman, so I incorporated music-themed fabric into the Hunter’s Star design, a personal favorite.
At the Bandstand, Under a Starry Night, back
However, he took one look at it and kind of squinched up his eyes, subtly shook his head and didn’t say much. I figured it out, and made him a different one (#43 on the 100 Quilts List), which he liked much better. This one sat around.
I pulled it out because I’d put it on my Finish-A-Long list, rummaged through my fabric stash, finding the borders already cut out. I slipped in the yellow inner border for some variety (funny how your quilting tastes change), found a large piece of IKEA fabric and put a back on it so my quilter could get it quilted for me.
Back detail
As you all know, it had been a beyond-stressful week for me not only for my own puny reasons, but troubles within my larger circle of people I love. And then the landline phone on the house telephone went out. That’s it, I said. So I sat down and put on the binding, and Friday morning found me traveling north with my husband to a scientific conference. I happily stitched as he drove.
quilt on a large cypress tree, outside our hotel room
So we found ourselves here in Monterey and it’s the jazz festival — a Big Deal, with Big Names — jazz in the lounge, on the stereo, musical instruments being seen everywhere. And I thought of the best kind of music, being played with great affection and intensity under a starry night, perhaps even by a band on a bandstand on a summery night, and so the quilt found its name, and its finish.
This is one of my project on the Finish-A-Long list, and quilt #47 on my 100 Quilts List. Yes, I went backwards. (Although now I only list them when they are completed, earlier I slipped in a couple of tops only.)
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 