Monthend Ramblings

March was a busy month with a trip to SoCal, a weekend visit from the Rausch family, my usual jamming and drying activities, and finally some serious time spent with Ernie, the cabin cat. Actually, time with Ernie is just a studio perk. I started the month with a few no-brainer projects (much of what I’ve been doing lately) and made a half-dozen totes. A couple of them, more involved than the usual 5” square bags, I’d decided to use as a way to ease back into piecing with a greater purpose than just sewing squares together. A mini-quilt of sorts. Part of my purpose was to break out of my typical (comforting) blue-green-purple color scheme. Out came a large bag of ½ yard cuts of fabric Lauren bought for me last fall at our favorite Portland Craft Market flat-fold sale. Nothing but blues and oranges! I attacked the stack of fabrics, loving the striking contrast of the complementary colors and after my first project decided March would be exclusively blues and oranges.

I was having so much fun working with the color combination that I decided to move on from totes and work on a pattern of a rooster (actually, the designer called it a hen, but clearly she doesn’t know chickens like I do) that I’d purchased at the Portland quilt show last September. My choice of colors was easy…blues and oranges. I spent the next several days working diligently on what was to become my birthday present to me. I told Verne all else would have to wait until I completed my birthday rooster. March 13^th I gave myself an adorable rooster wall-hanging that now fills the space to the right of my longarm. It’s one of the best gifts I’ve ever received and makes me happy every time I look at it. (Yes, I know...he still needs an eye.)

I had to get serious the last half of the month as Sally had completed a bed quilt and mailed it to me in late February. I’d planned to get it quilted in time to take it to her on our next trip South. Usually, the first hurdle is deciding on a design, but it didn’t take me long to come up with a design and a way to stitch from one block to another without breaking the thread. This is a big deal! But, I always manage to find some reason to delay and this time it was the shear size. The quilt stretched from one side of the longarm to the other leaving only 1” on each end of the zipper system I use to attach the quilt to the frame. Yikes! I figured it would take me 3-4 partial days to complete the quilt, square it up, and (maybe) bind it. I wouldn’t normally machine stitch the binding and almost never hand stitch it, but the quilt was so big and so heavy by the time I finished, I knew that it was too much for Sally to handle. And, it just seemed like something I should do for my BFF…I knew that Sally would agree with that! I gave myself four days and, by golly, nothing went wrong and I finished it in four days. In fact, I am writing while on the way to Santa Barbara to deliver it. Here’s a picture of Sally’s beautiful new bedspread.

Speaking of Sally and her quilting ventures, she never ceases to amaze me. She too continues to make totes and seems to sell them as fast as she can make them. Living so close to the ocean, she’s made several themed totes, including beach, fish, and more recently, turtles. Here’s a picture of her latest (and cutest to date) tote…