A Contemplative Life

Recently I was blessed to receive four bags of fabric! The bags were for full-queen comforters, recycled as a quilter might dream, lol. One was all solids, two were a mix and many of the pieces were a yard or larger, SCORE! The last bag, on first glance, was of much smaller scraps, and I opened it last, finding quite the treasure; one and a half inch strips, mostly neutrals, many being Width of Fabric (WOF) in length! I divided the prints into stacks; stuff for the grandgirls, autumnal fabrics, batiks, Christmas, low volume (Most of which was one-yard cuts, sweet!), and a small pile, maybe no more than four or five pieces, for a Kawandi quilt I'd like to make. I didn't make it through all the solid hues, and those fabrics weren't run of the mill cottons; they felt like a blend of cotton and linen, what treasure! The fabrics also felt HEAVIER than what I currently sew with; the oldest piece was dated from 1997, but who knows from when these were purchased. The giver is older...

I saw these earlier today and snapped them late this afternoon. Reminds me of some of the fabrics I encountered, hehehe. After I finished cutting fabric today, I had some four and a half inch wide strips left, and I put them in a tote notable for four and a half inch wide strips, among other scraps. I carried the tote into the living room with the desire to go through it later. Well, I just did so, and to my delight, what amounts to at least an entire quilt top/back is waiting for me to piece it together. Maybe more like two tops/backs, what with MANY strips as well as two stacks of varied sizes of large scraps, my goodness! It was like revisiting the last five-plus years of my stash, perhaps longer. One particular autumnal-hued piece went into the autumn-6.5" stack to be cut into squares, while another small collection of already cut 4.5" squares went into another tote. Only a few pieces were tossed from prints I don't need, and those pieces were small. Funny to think ho...

Fabric with dots is Aerial View. The other is Lands End. I like the colour blue. In lots of shades. And pink. In many hues. And I like the weight of Ruby Star Society fabrics, especially for EPP. Put those together, and tonight I have much of another block for my Eden quilt sorted. I also like making blocks that have a center hexagon, lol! Cornflower blocks , Eden blocks; what I appreciate is simply stitching around a basted shape, not worrying if center points meet up. I realized that while making the Cornflower blocks, and it's reinforced with these little beauties. Earlier today I put fabric on the design wall, but I'm keeping this quilt under wraps until it's gifted, as it's a surprise. Not in time for Christmas, but hopefully before February. Large squares will lend themselves to being quickly turned into a top, but as I plan to hand-quilt this project.... It's going to take a few weeks of evening stitching. Yet having completed the design element freed me to ...

The original albeit augmented quilt laid out as I affixed the back, the first part of the Kawandi process! Notable tears and rips are visible, why this quilt required a complete overhaul. This is heavy on pictures as I want to illustrate my Kawandi process. Because once I decided how to upcycle Dorothy's quilt, I got right to work as visiting summer beloveds allowed, hehehe. The outer perimeter is attached! I had to be careful NOT to stitch the quilt to the bed, hahaha. I write that due to the fact I started refurbishing this quilt in early May, then it lay dormant for nearly all of June and part of July. When I returned from keeping an eye on the grandsons on this sixth of this month, I dedicated most of my sewing hours to this effort, although the project feels more drawn out than those few months suggest. Rounds accumulate to the point I could sew in the living room, always a pleasure! Especially fun is watching the changing nature of the quilt, although I was slightly aggrieved...

The Kaffe Fassett collection side. Recently I gratefully accepted that all my ongoing projects, both in writing and quilting, aren't a burden; right now I couldn't wrap my head around sorting out something new. I preface this post with that realization because it's good to embrace one's limits and other extraneous forces wafting nearby. Now, to the placemats. I began sewing them in a rather impromptu manner a couple of months ago, having blithely purchased some gorgeous Kaffe Fassett prints. Incorporating my love for Kawandi-style stitching, as well as wanting to use up scraps for the backs, I whipped through four or five, then made my way through three or four more, employing fewer scraps for the backs because that quickly lost its shine, lol. Then I bought a wee bit more fabric (LOL) because my husband actually said he really liked one of the prints, and I found it in three other colourways! And then I found myself with only a few of the original choices left, so I pr...

I really LOVE how vibrant are these colours! I just finished my second flag. I don't know how many I'll make, but I sure enjoy creating them. I learned A LOT in sewing the first one, which I have belatedly titled, 'Stars and Swans-Reclaiming the Flag'. I learned that 1) Flags aren't hard to make, but unless you follow a well-written tutorial, best assume your efforts will be improv. 2) My flags are art as well as defiance tools. I want them to be pretty as well as functional. And 3) Just when I thought with Kawandi-inspired quilting that I was ready to give up my sewing machine, I was wrong. First off, here are the measurements, all pre-sewing: Union rectangle measured seventeen by twenty-four inches. Short stripes were three inches wide, thirty-five inches long. Long stripes were three inches wide and fifty-nine inches long. I sewed some test strips to made sure the stripes were the correct width, and I could have increased the stripe width to maybe three and an e...

  Bright but...a mess. Tilda and Anna Maria fabrics feature prominently. My husband was away for a few days, visiting our son. I took the opportunity to do a fair amount of reading on The Hawk Book 1, going to two sessions of PT for my right hip and knee, raking leaves, designing a quilt, then redesigning a quilt. Because sometimes fast isn't best. Fast is what I wanted this quilt to be; eight-inch squares would sew up VERY SPEEDILY, yet they looked a mess, but this is for me, for winter, and for much of that season it wouldn't even be wholly visible on the bed, covered by a slender but necessary blanket I crocheted eons ago. So basically this quilt doesn't need to be spectacular, merely WARM. I'll double the batting, back it with flannel, and be super happy on cold nights, lol. Yet.... When I went to bed after the initial design, I wasn't happy. I wasn't mad either, not at myself for the haphazard manner of putting together a new quilt top, but I sighed as I g...

  Back of the quilt. Well, I guess I am going to post about this comforter, or at least include a healthy amount of pictures, especially of the back, which I LOVE! The front is nice too, lol. And having washed it twice, it's not as stiff as previously, although it needs plenteous cuddles (and more laundering) to really become the snuggly quilt I hear it screaming to be. Binding is scrappy, what I forgot to mention in this post. I REALLY LOVE the vibrancy of the fabrics, front and back. Screaming might be a little farfetched; it is certainly hollering, what with two layers of batting, which I did because batting is so thin these days. To my joy, and relief, this quilt doesn't feel too heavy. It's a nice weight, the right size for one person, or a grandma and a nieto or nieta. It's definitely long enough for me to drape over myself from chest to feet, complete coverage of shoes. That matters, as I'm a little over five foot seven inches tall, and am not keen on lap qu...

Such a joy and relief to have a book released; Life Stories has already made its way to Apple Books , Barnes & Noble , Everand (formerly Scribd), and Kobo , pretty cool! Meanwhile, I've formatted the first novel for The Hawk , will probably release that tale in early December. More about that as autumn ticks past, although a few days of summer officially remain. It's a foggy morning here, definitely feeling like a new season has arrived. Autumnal hues in this Mandolin block probably add to my sense of seasonal alteration. Maybe that sensation is due to having published a novel, time for summer to give way to more indoorsy pastimes. I've been busy with hand-sewing, completing a Mandolin block (pictured above) this morning, as well as next week's Red Sky at Night block, lol. Bridal Bouquet (pictured below) was a bit fuzty to baste, making sure the directional papers were all going the right way as well as basted so the perimeter pieces fold outwards. The sewing of ...

I only have a few holdovers from my eleven years lived in Yorkshire, England. The spelling of favourite is one, drinking British teas, and calling gas petrol . I used to employ the British pronunciation of tomato, but now tomato has the long A, yet it has been seventeen years since we left the United Kingdom. I thought about favourites, not the spelling but the meaning, as I got up from my computer earlier today, taking a quick break from The Hawk , then passing the fabric stack pictured above. That swan, from Anna Maria Horner, makes me giddy, makes me want to include it in every EPP project I have currently underway, not to mention in machine-pieced shinies. Returning to my PC, I began a new post, typed the title, then went about whatever I was doing, probably reading The Hawk . What had been a couple of chapters a day has morphed into like five, perhaps more. I could look it up in my journal, but suffice to say, with just a couple dozen chapters left, I am ripping through that story...