It's definitely Fall...

I have come back to the place that soothes my soul...

I just didn't think my soul would freeze while I was here!

Happy 09-09-09...

It's got a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Definitely worth toasting with your drink (or nine) of choice, I think. I may just break out the tequila today, I have limes left over from the marinade I used on the grilled chicken Sunday night.

The clear, mid-70's weather at the beach this weekend was a gift -- compensation, maybe, for a cloudy, cooler-than-average summer. I took my coffee down to the water each morning, sipping it slowly while the waves lapped at my pajama cuffs, feeling the sun on my back, a slight breeze on my face. Still, there was a hint of Fall in the water, and in early morning, the sand held the overnight cold much longer this late in the season.

On Day 2 I took my camera down with me and finally managed to get a decent picture of what inspired my quilting on this quilt. It's the sand in the shallow water just at Lake Michigan's shore, rippled by the waves. I think I came pretty close to capturing it.

I also noticed these cool designs being created on the sand each time a wave came up. Little mountainscapes, ever changing, the entire length of the beach.

They looked a little like spider veins, too, but we won't go there.


Which got me thinking that these might be cool to incorporate into some kind of quilting, too.


It may take a while to find (or create) the right piece to do this on, but it could be interesting!

Goodbye, summer...

It's something I ask myself every year: where did the summer go?

It never seems like I've savored it enough, or reveled in its warmth (though this one goes down as the cloudiest on record), or appreciated its bounty.

And as the sun kissed the horizon on the last "official" day of summer, I asked it again.

Winter's on its way. Big sigh.

Clearing the decks...

Yesterday was a clean-up day. I tried to get some little projects done that were just messing up my workspace so I could get back to some of the more important things on my ever-growing project list. Like my crazy quilt blocks. I've almost forgotten what I was doing with them!

I got both of these little doll quilts quilted and, while trying to find the right size batting got all my batting scraps organized. Woo-woo!

I stippled the one on the left so much that the one on the right hardly got any. I think I just need more practice, that stippling got really tiny and if you turn it over, it kind of looks like I was drunk when I did it. Given it was before breakfast and way too early to be imbibing, I'm blaming it on Free Motion Anxiety and my Cafe Americano.

These piles have been cut and waiting patiently for a few weeks -- it's a wonder they didn't get tossed around by my manic kitty. He's had other things to keep his attention, namely the bunny on the front lawn and a UTI. But that's a story for another day...

I got them all sewn up yesterday afternoon. I figured this would be a good traveling project to take to the beach house this weekend (no cutting, no measuring, just sewing row upon row of square-in-a-square blocks). These pictures, unfortunately, don't do them justice (they're Sue Zipkin's "Winter Joy" by Clothworks), these colors look terrible here -- that's not red (it's more of a mulberry), and the cream is actually white. I really need to work on my ability to shoot with incandescent lighting.

I have also been tweaking my jelly roll pattern to reflect the great feedback I've gotten so far. If you haven't heard from me, your comments to my last post came up as "no reply," so if you didn't have a blog where I could contact you, I had no other means. If you'd still like the pattern, send me a gmail.

Back to a day of crazy quiltin'!

So far, so good...

I decided to add the two borders, mostly to use up my leftovers. Still haven't gotten it quilted, but my derailment is, in my mind, justified.

I really like how easy this was. And I had a few questions about this one -- I didn't use a pattern for it, so I'm working on recreating my steps. Or trying to. Writing a pattern is a lot harder than it sounds, and I'm math-challenged, so it's taking longer than expected. In fact, I've spent more time trying to capture it all than it took to make the top!

Anyone willing to try it out when I'm done?

Oh, and if anyone knows if this pattern already exists, would you please let me know? I definitely don't want to get involved in any copyright infringement! Thanks!

Time for a little instant gratification...

I ventured back to Michigan last week for another long weekend in the north woods. Which, of course, meant another trip to my favorite quit shop. I'd managed to miss their annual sidewalk sale by visiting the weekend before and the weekend after, and I was happy they still had some of these Moda jelly rolls left. I'd been thinking about this one since my last trip, and regretted not picking it up the first time around. I fell in love with the bright, saturated colors of the fabrics -- like the name implies, they really do feel fresh!

When I got home, I dove right into it. I know if I sit on something too long, I'll get paralyzed by indecision and it'll end up in a stash box.

Gotta swim with the momentum while it's flowing, the tide seems to ebb rather quickly around here.

So I made this:

I definitely needed to get something done. It always feels so good to actually complete a top, especially to one whose work usually ends up half-baked in a Ziploc bag! I'm still contemplating adding a border, which would seriously threaten its progress, and I'd really like to get it quilted this week to further add to my sense of accomplishment. Here's hoping!

And while I've been gone off and on for the past month, my little neighbor Ryan has been watering the flowers on my deck. He takes this responsibility very seriously, reminding his mother every morning that "Cake's flowers need water!" Over the years I've been "Aunt Take," "Auntie Tate," now "Cake." It could be worse.

Now, the weather took a surprisingly cool turn while I was gone last week, bringing a ton of rain (and a tornado, which I missed driving through by oh, six or seven minutes), and, I imagine, a bit of relief to my petunias, but that really doesn't explain how everything has virtually exploded.

I came home to a festival of purples and pinks and crazy verbena. My butterfly bush has dozens of cones, and my roses, which last year produced three flowers all summer, have twelve blooms on one bush this week alone!

Obviously Ryan has a greener thumb than I. Maybe I should leave a three-year old in charge for good?

Back to our regularly scheduled chaos...

And I have to say, a computer crash really takes the wind out of one's sails.

I've spent about a week recovering data and transferring it to a new machine. I'm still not sure I got it all -- I'm sure I'll realize I need some obscure file about an hour after I take my old laptop off life support. On the upside, my new machine is fast and shiny, with a hard drive three times the size of the old one; on the downside, it came loaded with Vista. Don't get me started on that.

Vacation seems like forever ago. I sunned, I swam, I golfed, took tons of pictures, enjoyed 45-degree mornings and 75-degree days with blinding sunrises, and managed to pump a fair amount of money into Michigan's quilt shop economy. Between three shops I purchased a jelly roll, some adorable snowflake prints that I have no idea what I'm going to do with them but were just too cute to resist, and a Woodland Bloom charm pack for a very special project this week: I was on Monkey Girl duty.

My goddaughter has been reminding me for the past six months that she learned how to sew, which qualified her to make a doll quilt when she came to visit this summer. Who was I to dispute her expertise?

I'd seen a short program on Quilter's TV with Billie Lauder (sorry, can't find a link) where she sewed two squares into a tube, sliced it down the middle, rotated the top piece and made another tube to cut in half to produce a nice, tidy four-patch. It seemed like a good, easy place to start, so when Monkey Girl arrived, in addition to making a special shopping trip for Kraft Mac 'n Cheese, chocolate pudding, peanut butter (and, for good measure, a jar of Marshmallow Fluff) and a little fruit just so I could say she ate healthy, I had her machine all set up and the squares ready to go.

Over the course of an afternoon, she made four-patches out of all of the squares. Her seams were a little wobbly but not horrible (I set up a "fence" made of about eight layers of painter's tape a quarter inch from the needle to keep her on track), and we only had to redo a couple that wavered a little uncontrollably when she picked up speed, but all in all, it was great progress...until she proclaimed to her mother that "parts of quilting were boring."

I suppose that's to be expected of an eight-year old. She liked making the "checkers," as she called them, and liked arranging them. The ironing and trimming and piecing the sashing? Not so much. I was left with making the actual tops while she colored and ate Fluffernutter sandwiches, which was fine. I managed to get one quilted before she left, packaged up as a surprise for her birthday next month.

Doll quilts for Nelly, Samantha and Kirsten -- American Girl Store, eat your heart out

I'm not so sure we'll be sewing next summer.

Monkey Girl works on her first quilt project

She's off to spend time with more family before returning with Mom & Dad to Bermuda, so my house is once again at peace, and Archie can come out from under the bed. The question is, though: what do I do with all this pudding?