In the meantime...

I'm still working on this top, but the stack of leftovers from the original Modern Workshop (Oliver + S) layer cake was cluttering up my sewing space and getting in the way.

So I chopped it up and made another one.

I think the two quilts will play nicely together!

Late to the party...

Well, where have I been that I missed the kickoff to Amy's Bloggers' Quilt Festival? Crawling under a cottage to drain the pipes, perhaps? Cleaning gutters at my parents' house? Prioritizing my list of yet-to-be-started Christmas projects? All of the above?

It's a little repetitive, but I'm entering the quilt from yesterday's post. I'm proud of it because after several attempts at patterns for the fabric my mother had picked out in early 2006, I was finally able to settle on one and FINISH IT. I'm sure she's forgotten all about it (or given up on ever seeing these fabrics again), so it will be a fun surprise for Christmas.

The learning from this project is this: sometimes trying to force a pattern just doesn't work. Sometimes simple (and easy!) is the best, and let the fabrics speak for themselves. I just wish I'd figured that out five years ago!

So here it is. It ain't fancy, but I love it.

Want to see more entries in the Festival?  Go here:

Ushering in the Season of Panic...

Well, the cottage is all buttoned up for the winter, and I've said goodbye to the sunset side of the Big Lake. Back in Chicago, it's time to really get working on all those projects that need to be done in the next seven or so weeks!

The zinnia quilt is complete. I'm really happy with the boldness of it, and I've totally fallen in love with the French blue in the upper right of this picture.

The quilt matches the cottage, but it's not staying here!

I couldn't get a good picture of the whole quilt out on the beach -- too much sun was messing with the contrast.  But what a great complaint to have the first week in November! It was close to seventy degrees on Tuesday, which made closing up the house seem a little premature. But it's the wacky-weather Midwest, and it could very well be snowing in a week (it's in the forties and raining today), so leaving on a high note was the right thing to do.

I'm very glad Jacquie talked me into going with a black and white binding. I was going to use one of the zinnia prints (kind of boring), and this one gives it a little more zip.

How's everybody doing on their gift list? Panicked yet, like me?

A peek...

...at what I've been working on.

Still filling in holes and having a ball with bias edges...but I like what's taking shape!

Fall in the north woods...

There's nothing as fun as spending a long weekend with girlfriends you haven't seen in forever -- unless it's spending it in northern Michigan with the best weather they've ever seen in early October: cloudless days, eighty-degree temps, and colors that are so pretty they make you cry.

Well, OK, they made me cry; it was an emotional weekend all around. This was the place where our friendship was born and solidified. Returning here minus one (still out west tending to her ailing husband)made it bittersweet.

I made bracelets for everybody to commemorate the event. See? I knew there was a good reason I was hanging on to all those boxes from my favorite cheese! With some paint, ribbon and a little rubber stamping, they made fine jewelry boxes! I used batting scraps to line them.

The golf course was prettier than ever. Two of us got a couple rounds in before the non-golfers arrived.

I awoke every morning to watch the sunrise, each day disturbing a great blue heron who likes to fish in the neighborhood. It took three days to capture him in flight -- what a magnificent bird!

And, of course, I worked on my quilts -- though not as much as I was supposed to. This one's all washed and ready to get shipped out west. I think Rick's going to like the flannel (front and back).

Saying goodbye as we dispersed to Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Chicago, Montreal and Bermuda was hard. How we ended up so far apart is beyond us; we really belong in the same place, cooking for each other and borrowing each other's clothes, just like the early days.



My peeps on the dock. Nobody wanted a close-up.

The trip home was breathtaking with all the trees in transition. I don't usually stop the car for pictures, but this stretch of woods just north of Cadillac made me backtrack and pull over for a few shots.

Rainy Chicago is kind of a letdown after that, but at least it's giving me a reason to stay inside, catching up on things. I still have a lot of binding to do!

Progress...

First of all, thanks for all the kind words for my friend Rick. He's back home after two anxiety-ridden weeks and two surgeries to remove the brain and lung tumors. He has a long road ahead of him, but has a great outlook and support has been emerging from every direction for him and his family.

His quilt has gone together nicely. I hit a glitch when I got the flannel sandwich taped to the floor and discovered that all my basting pins were otherwise occupied -- I had basted the zinnia quilt before I left on vacation and hadn't gotten back to it yet (and pretty much forgot about it in the course of three weeks away). I could have taken a trip to Joann's for more pins, but it made more sense just to get it out of the way, so here it is:

Jacquie convinced me to go with a more dramatic binding than what I'd originally picked out. It's stitched down and waiting for hand sewing -- and I'm so happy I took her advice! She also tried to talk me into adding some free motion to break up all the straight lines...I'm still thinking about that one. The woman knows her stuff, so there's a good chance I'll go back to it and fill some spots in.

The quilting on the flannel went pretty quickly, nothing too fancy. I'll spend the next few nights cleaning up threads and binding, then take better pictures.

It could be a record for me -- two finishes in one week! Yay!

When the going gets tough, the tough get sewing...

Well hey, I'm back.

I've actually been back for a while -- I was pulling three and a half weeks of pictures together, getting ready to write a wonderful "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" post, and then...well, let's just say I should have thrown that expired bottle of Yellow Thai Curry Sauce in the garbage instead of using it as a dipping sauce for my pork tenderloin Sunday night.

As it was pouring onto my plate, in the back of mind I was thinking "Huh. That isn't as thick as usual," but went about my dinner anyway. The good news is, I only brought the misery (and oh, what misery it was!) upon myself. The bad news:  I don't bounce back nearly as quickly as I used to -- it took almost five days to shake it completely.

Eight pounds lighter and about 87 hours of sleep fresher, I was all set to write my post on Friday. I turned on the computer, and opened an e-mail from one of my oldest and dearest girlfriends out West. It starts in the way no e-mail ever should:

Rick had a cerebral hemorrhage yesterday.

Rick, her husband, is only in his mid-forties, a doting father of two little girls, an active and avid rock climber with a great dry wit, and a loving partner in life to my dear friend. He was an orderly in the hospital where her mother lay dying of cancer fifteen years ago; their meeting was like two puzzle pieces clicking together to form a bright and hopeful picture amid a boatload of sorrow.

The bleeding in his brain was coming from a golf ball-sized mass in his right frontal lobe. A day later, a scan turned up another mass in his lung. They have to wait until next week for biopsies.

The unfairness and uncertainty of it all has me reeling. Suddenly my problems, complaints, and annoyances seem terribly petty and inconsequential by comparison.

My gut reaction was to jump on a plane, but she assured me she has a support system in place to at least get her through the next few weeks; flying to her side would only be another body to accommodate and create more chaos. This is going to be a long haul, and there will be plenty of opportunities to be there.

My other reaction, for some unknown reason, was to sew.

This has happened before:  in the days after another friend's mother died, I made a quilt with her mom's favorite colors. Something that was not entirely me took over, and I was pulling fabrics and cutting and had a quilt before I knew it. I'm sure the mindlessness of it all has something to do with it, but to me, quilts mean comfort, and if I can't be there in person to provide it, I'm sending a quilt to do it for me.

So I pulled out all my flannels yesterday and started cutting because it's all I can do. For now.