Random musings

-
My eight-year-old grandson's first mug rug! Violet Craft and Kaffe Fassett feature heavily alongside the bottom left batik square.

Teaching my grandson the basics of machine sewing has been one main joy of the past week, amid the general pleasures of a youngster's presence. While I had initiated the notion of stitching, he brought it up on his first full day, and by Thursday he had a coaster waiting for the quilt sandwich treatment. He also helped me design a new quilt, which awaits time under the machine when life returns to its regularly scheduled programming.

In these early hours of the day I've managed a good look at recent manuscripts and so far I'm happy with the results. I've come up with the beginning of what will be Book 5 in the series, and the basics for Book 6 are pretty firm in my mind. Those stories are definitely for Future Me, like 2024 Me. Yet it's great to have a road map for this saga; I might know the eventual destination, but how to get there remains a mystery, albeit a little clearer.

Just this morning I had an idea for the currently wafting in my head version of Jen Kingwell's Wandering Wife quilt that might even make it into one of those future books, ha ha! Hard for me to keep my favourite pastimes separated. Instead of machine pieced blocks framed by strips, I'm conjuring orphaned EPP blocks appliqued onto solid fabrics, then placed randomly in the beauty of Kingwell's design. Another project for Future Me, both in the literal and the literary.

And I've learned that one-inch hexies fit perfectly on preemie onesies. More about that soon....

Popular posts from this blog

Fits, starts, and restarts

-
Image
Two examples from two different skeins of yarn where breaks in the colour scheme occur. Very indicative of my current mood, lol. This is a funny novel, for all the hemming and hawing going on. Never before have I written, then purged scenes with somewhat of an abandon. I truly don't know what to make of it, chalking it up to age, grieving, the weirdly long winter (even though it's spring), or my new computer keyboard, which is small but adequate in a strangely truncated manner. I'm enjoying the writing, but the story keeps veering off on tangents I'm not comfortable with, in that too much is being revealed too soon, bleh. Future and Past Me's are steering clear of this manuscript, perhaps because what came before it was so out of the blue, so cathartic, and this prequel is just as outta my backside as any I've ever written. But I am writing, let me restate that, despite restarting a chapter here and there. I'm not getting much else accomplished, other than s
Read more

Orphan blocks are not like unfinished novels

-
Image
It's a busy day, getting ready for guests that will enlighten our lives for the next week. However my feet are a little weary, so why not ramble here for a bit, giving those dogs a rest as well as set upon a discourse about the above title before I forget why I thought it was important (lol). I don't even know why I first pondered this, maybe an IG poster mentioned them, which made me think of my orphan EPP blocks. I don't have many machine sewn blocks without a home, but plenty of English paper pieced designs linger in a tote, patterns I liked and HAD TO MAKE. I used plenty of them on a Turning Twenty quilt, decorating some plain tone-on-tone prints and that was a great manner in which to employ less than a quarter of what remains, ahem. Oh and I used some on a t-shirt quilt that I made in conjunction with a friend, who had lived in Hawaii for a few years and wanted to put her aged shirts to quilty use. But still many remain, although I have a plan for them, hehehe. I am h
Read more

Following one's heart

-
Image
Fascinating from the back, as though a map to an unknown destination. It was an early start today, half a chapter written, then texting with my youngest daughter and enjoying photos of her sunrise a few hours east of us. I woke to clear, starry skies, but clouds have since moved in, rain forecast for the next few days. Maybe in a few days I'll have completed my novel; it's VERY CLOSE to being done, but I said that in a recent post, The End dangling like a carrot merely an arm's length away. Meanwhile I've been stitching together Cornflower blocks each evening. The photo above was snapped last night, what I see as I sew. MANY papers to remove, but I'll deal with that later, lol. I'm also working on another quilt, hehehe, more about that in a day or two. And the last ones for this year are washed and waiting to be given to my granddaughters on Christmas, which is just a little over a week away! I considered today's title right after reading through the sevente
Read more