Some technical difficulties, but now — photos!

Where’d the weekend go?

Well, part of it went to attending the funeral of my kindergarten teacher and parents’ neighbor, Mary Collins. The service was homey and friendly, just at her parish church and then on to the cemetery. Her nieces and nephew, surrounded by their children, spoke words during the liturgy. The niece I knew most growing up got up to speak more of a eulogy at the end. First off, somewhere along the line, she started looking like my memory of her aunt when her aunt was younger. That was a bit of a shock. The stories she told of growing up with her family and aunt were wonderful and rang so true. A real tribute.

I had been thinking about Mary (or Miss Collins as she told us to call her when at school) and there were a lot of nice memories there – growing marigolds in little paper cups at school, helping her put together new cardboard building blocks, going out to lunch with her.

She took my brother and I out for lunch for our birthdays. How special to go out with a non-family grown up. We’d go to places like The Boulevard or, later, l’Ecole for lunch or early dinner. Then to a shop for a quick treat and perhaps something for the non-birthday kid at home.

What else?

• A little cleaning and straightening – some inside (living room) and some outside (front and side garden).
• I had my first lettuce out of the garden.
• Straightened up some paperwork and got ready for round two of name-changing stuff.
• Found some red and some black raspberries along the edges of the yard- enough to pick a half-bowlful tonight!
• Still sewing on the new quilt – about 1/3 of the second half is done. You do the math.
• Tonight I made pizza and ciabatta. I figured, what the heck, the oven is going to be hot anyway!

Someone (I don’t remember and frankly it doesn’t matter because it’s been asked at least twice in the last month) said this on QuiltArt:

So has anyone done anything interesting lately with fabric, dyes, and/or thread?

To which I replied to the list:

Yes

I mean, really, either the answer is “Yes” or you are doing something else, right?

In actuality, I’ve been sewing together the short rows of my work in progress and I’m just about at the halfway point. That would make it about 1/4 sewn together, for those keeping score mathmatically. I really like the colors. Years ago I would never imagined making quilts where blues were the zinger color. But colors are just colors and if you’re working with warm browns and yellow greens and a lot of yellows and oranges, well – blue is the balance.

And I can hear some of you thinking to yourself – warm browns – has she completely flipped out. Someone stopped me, years ago, when I used “warm blue” in a sentence about a then current quilt. Um, he asked, how the heck can you be meaning a warm blue? Isn’t blue by nature of being blue a COOL color?” Au contraire grasshoppers! Blue can certainly be warmer OR cooler, depending on how much red is in it.

In the spectrum that is my stash there is a lot of variation in each bin – greens dark and black, greens yellow and brown, greens touched with that weird turquoise-y cast. Yellows with grey, yellows with orange, yellows that flirt with green, but in a shadowy kind of way.

Well, you look at color your way and I’ll sit back and enjoy that bit of cobalt among all those nice earthy colors. Pretty soon it will be your turn to say that it looks nice as rectangles.

wheeeee! Back from Vermont, where I was honored to be a part of the “History Makers” exhibit, curated by Pam Druhan. This was an exhibit of quilts going back to 1985 and having a nice selection of quilts that had been best of show or which had received special awards of one kind or another. Anyway, there I was with the “big boys” like Sandra Donabed et al. Whoa.

Last night I was quite happy to sit and stand in one place and to rearrange my mis-placed squares.

Tonight’s another story though — I have so far sewn six eight columns of squares together. Photos to come.

PS – eight columns is one quarter of the way. Fun!

I’ve updated the new project page with photos from tonight. It’s also linked to the right.

and finally, an obligatory kitten shot or two.

OK, I’ve got the whole thing laid out. Hmmmm. Well it was very puzzling. My paper diagram calls for three rows of squares all around the outside. With six squares remaining, there are two rows of squares across the top and bottom and three on the sides. SO. I can make 64 more squares OR I can take off a row on each side.

I think I’ll take some photos of the squares as they are and photoshop on and off a row and think about it.

Doing this was a good thing because in looking over my notes again, I realized that I showed 2-square rows on the inside of the thing rather than the 3-square rows I had laid out. Ah ha!

So let me restate: six squares remaining, and it’s all laid out. Just needs a little rearranging! Ooops!

• As laid out
• Two rows of squares around outer edge
• Mock up of how it’s supposed to be.