42 blocks

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Eeep, what a fabulous stack of fabrics and paper pieces!

We're enjoying a marvelous visit with guests; plenty of walkarounds when the weather is dry, and copious stitching while the rain falls, which was the case yesterday, allowing me to complete the last Cornflower quilt block! Jodi Godfrey's pattern calls for thirty-six blocks, but I went further, upping the total for an additional row. I have truly loved making this particular English paper pieced design, and can't wait to start basting squares so I can sew the whole thing together!

When I think about how this quilt began, I return not to one moment of, "Oh yeah, now I'm going to make this pattern." This quilt began far more whimsically, in that I had sewn together a few blocks for the fun of it, set them aside, then maybe two years later in going through my assorted EPP blocks, I decided to go further with this design. A kit was ordered, then began the serious but not speedy work to make this quilt happen. It's definitely scrappy, although some of the blocks feature this or that collection or designer. Many are wholly random, all have a green perimeter, mostly because when I started, green batik jelly roll strips were prevalent in my scrap stash and this was the perfect way to employ them.

The last dozen or so blocks feature autumnal Art Gallery fabrics and William Reue's Architecture School collection; this is a quilt for year-round use! I can't wait to see how the green accents the black squares; I have two different fabrics for those squares, both with a space/constellation theme. I don't have a timetable for this project's completion, but it will probably be done by next fall. Making blocks is easy and portable. What awaits are many hours of EPP laying over my lap as stitch by stitch the stack above turns into a cohesive whole. Which is very similar to how sentence by sentence paragraphs are formed, scenes written, a novel emerges.

Creativity is a life-long process, taking parts of myself and transferring them into stories or quilts. And sometimes quilts are a story in themselves, each basted square like a chapter in fabric, perhaps telling its own small tale shaped as a diamond, octagon, petal, or square. How fabulous are the myriad manners of expression, the colours and prints a word or nuance waiting to be savoured!

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