Spring to summer

We cannot stop the winter or the summer from coming. We cannot stop the spring or the fall or make them other than they are. They are gifts from the universe that we cannot refuse. But we can choose what we will contribute to life when each arrives. Gary Zukav
Spring has arrived.  Hints of summer are evident in the heat the last few days.  The garden is being planted.  The weeds are coming up!  The colors are changing!  The latest quilt reminds me of the greens of spring and the turquoises of the melting streams.

The central panel is a hand dyed fabric in the shibori style.  The central appliqué design is from a  Celtic circular bronze shield boss dredged from the river Thames near Wardsworth, London, England and estimated to be from approximately 300-200 BC.

The quilt is approximately 54 x70 “.  It is hand appliqued and hand quilted.  Completed 2017.

Chevrons

“Nana, I really like this design, do you think you could make me a quilt like this?”  grandson

Is there a grandmother out there that could resist a request like that?  I certainly couldn’t.  He even went with me to the fabric store to select the colors.  It all started because the last quilt that I made for him wasn’t long enough to cover his feet anymore.

Here, the blocks are laid out and ready to put together.  It was strip pieced, cut into triangles, sewn into long strips and then joined together.

Here’s what we came up with.  I think that it will cover him for at least a couple of years!

The quilt is about 72×84, machine pieced and machine quilted

Fixing and Repairing

“Being broken isn’t the worst thing. We can be mended and put together again. We don’t have to be ashamed of our past. We can embrace the history that gives us value, and see our cracks as beautiful.”
― Anna White, Mended: Thoughts on Life, Love, and Leaps of Faith

If you know quilters or have been around quilting much, you’ve heard horror stories about sending quilts off to quilt shows and some of the things that happen to your works of art in the process.  This story is a little different.  This summer I sent this quilt off to a quilt show on the East Coast.

It traveled to the show and back.  We had a trip planned before the quilts came back.  There was someone staying at the house while we were gone to house sit and dog sit.

Our cute little (?) dog, Frankie hasn’t shown the slightest interest in any of my quilts.  I have them over the backs of chairs and on a couple of quilt stands in her range.  She is part lab and part huskie.  We adopted her from a rescue center not quite a year ago and she has a delightful personality- – – most of the time!  Can you see where this is going?

I had warned the house sitter to be on the lookout for a package with my quilts in them.  They arrived, safe and sound, and were placed on the middle of the table, presumably out of reach of the dog.  They were left there while some other projects were completed.  Then the house sitter returned to find Frankie in the middle of the living room and a significant hole in one of the quilts.

When we returned home, the poor lady that was staying at the house was beside herself!  All the other quilts had been striped from chairs and quilt racks and put behind closed doors.  Fortunately, I don’t buy just enough fabric to finish a specific project, but wait for the fabric to speak to me or dance for me, so digging through scraps, I found enough to do a repair.

This is the after.   It probably is not show ready anymore, but repaired pretty well and now has a great story and memory to go with it!

View from the Balcony

“I think of you often. Especially in the evenings, when I am on the balcony and it’s too dark to write or to do anything but wait for the stars. A time I love. One feels half disembodied, sitting like a shadow at the door of one’s being while the dark tide rises. Then comes the moon, marvellously serene, and small stars, very merry for some reason of their own. It is so easy to forget, in a worldly life, to attend to these miracles.”
― Katherine Mansfield, The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume 1: 1903-1917

 

I recently ran across a couple of book illustrating the use of ironworks in architecture.  I miss seeing this kind of detail on the new buildings.  Ironwork adds unforgettable detail to  buildings!

Size 48×62.  Black ironwork is machine appliqued  on to batik background.  The quilt is handquilted with dark maroon thread and using gold thread to highlight some of the design.