This is just to say

I have begun
the new quilt-along
that is at
the old red barn co

a project
that you probably know
is
one too many

Forgive me
the quilt looks delicious
so fresh
and so clean


(with apologies to William Carlos Williams. Follow everyone's progress here.)

100!

Wow, this is my 100th post. I meant to post something more interesting in honor of the occasion, but I'm afraid it will only be more Dear Jane blocks. So here we go. At least this batch means I'm only two blocks behind on my quilt-along.
This is A-13, Starlight Starbright. I really like the way it turned out, even if the inset seams did get a little wonky. It's fun to work with some blue fabric for a change, too-- there'll be so little of it in my interpretation of this quilt.This is B-1, Bachelor's Buttons, reverse applique. I like to think I'm getting a little better at this applique business. It certainly is easier to applique a circle than a teardrop.

Oh, and a little anecdote that has nothing to do with crafting: Wednesday night I was standing at my ironing board in our basement when I heard a buzzing noise, growing louder, in the bathroom. I found several yellow jackets buzzing around the windows and lights in the room, and then I opened the door to the bathroom and it was like a horror movie. At least two hundred yellow jackets were swarming behind the curtains of the window facing the back of the house, back lit by the setting sun. I was just waiting for them to come after me. There was nothing to do but close the bathroom door, call the exterminator and spend the rest of the evening upstairs. Yikes. But maybe I can blame my lack of posting on the wasps?

Three more

Three more Dear Jane blocks today. I think this is my favorite of the bunch. This is D-7, Meeting Place. I'm just such a sucker for the crazy batiks tamed by straight lines and natural fabric backgrounds!
D-3, Jason's Jacks. I'm enjoying these appliqued blocks now that the quilt-along has forced me to tackle them. I love this fabric for this block, too.
And the third is K-7, Rose of Sharing. This one was appliqued in four parts and then machine stitched together. I'm branching out a little more as far as fabric choice goes, too. These three blocks don't look too hot all together, but on my design sheet and on the wall they look just fine in context. Just one more block and I'll be caught up on the Dear Jane-along.

Keeping up with Jane

Four new Dear Jane blocks today. Some were easier than others. This is E8, Mama's Maze. All paper pieced, and lots of fun. They just come out so great this way. Also, I love this orange fabric.
B-2, Sweet Tater Pie. This is another one (see also: A-1) that is running in the opposite direction from the original. I still think it looks cool. This one started out as two pinwheel blocks, one appliqued on top of the other. This is the method that I wanted to use on the block below, but I thought I should try the curved piecing...
Which was kind of a mistake. This is B-3, Mirror Image, and it's my second try at the block. At this point, I say good enough. Fortunately, the brown fabric does a pretty good job of camouflaging the worst flaws.
And just to document them all, this is M-10, Simple Simon.

Back on the Dear Jane bandwagon

A lovely new addition to my Dear Jane quest, this is block C-9, Jane's tears. I did this one in reverse applique, and it looks at least a little better than my last attempt at teeny-tiny applique. It was actually really enjoyable to do the whole thing by hand.

I've gotten back on the right track with this quilt thanks to Anina's Dear Baby Jane quilt-along. This block and B-13, Four Corner Press, were the blocks for this first week.

Quilt-along lil' gator

Here are two more blocks for the quilt-along. Most folks are all finished with their blocks and working on settings, but I still have a few blocks left to complete. I don't know why I'm dragging my feet on this, but this weekend I took down the blocks for another quilt that were hogging my design wall and threw these up. That has made all the difference in my feelings about this quilt. Seeing all the blocks up there on the wall looking awesome together is giving me the push I need to get it finished. Without further adieu: These are the week 9 blocks. I've always loved churn-dash. I used the batik on the left once before, but I think it's better displayed with these larger pieces. I like how it's really directional. And the brown one on the right because the design wall told me I needed more brown in the quilt.
And these are the blocks from week 10 of the project. I really like the one on the right, where you don't immediately realize that the colored blocks of the nine-patch are made from more than one fabric.
And here's one last thing that I finished up the other day. It's the Baby Alligator Scarf, made from a kit from Morehouse Farm Merino. The sport-weight yarn is a little stiff and was kind of full of plant matter*, but I think the stiffness really helps to make this pattern pop. Now the only question is-- Is this way too scary for a child to want to wear? It's sized for a wee little one but it even kind of freaks me out when I look at those empty eye sockets. Whew! ( I know that a slightly older kid, say 5 or so, would probably enjoy it, but I'm not sure it's big enough...)

*When I was a new knitter, I knit my first sweater from some lovely Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk yarn, with a Debbie Bliss pattern. I didn't feel confident enough to choose my own yarn to replace the yarn called for in patterns. My second sweater, for my husband, I chose to knit in Morehouse Farm Merino, mostly because the price was right. That was the most painful knit ever. I was pulling twigs and stems out of the yarn every few stitches, and after all that work, the finished product wasn't even that great-- it was stiff and kind of pill-y. The whole experience put me back quite a bit on this knitting thing. So know I know that the Morehouse Farm stuff is much better for smaller projects (for which they have several really cute patterns), and that knitting is expensive if you want it to be enjoyable.

Real Winter

Yesterday I took the horse to my friend Karen's place for our weekly Tuesday morning group ride over hill and dale. The sky was grey and thick and it was bitterly cold. We mounted up, and the dog was left behind in the trailer to wait this ride out as there were a couple of excitable babies (baby horses-- sometimes called "greenies") in our group of six. We trotted away from the barn and all the horses felt as though they might explode; they snorted across Pony Creek and up the hill to the big field full of holes where a house will be built soon. Full of anticipation and joy at being out.

The snow came slowly at first ("Nothing but flurries!" said George) but soon big wet flakes came quickly, blown horizontally by the wind. Little mounds of frozen white built up on the brims of our hats and in the soft spot between my horse's wither and the saddle pad. Moving through, it seemed as though the wind was swirling us along with the snow.

Then Karen's hearty laugh from behind me, "I can't see anything!"

"Me neither!" Snowflakes burning in my eyes.

"I'm just looking down at my pony's withers and trusting him to guide me home."

"Me, too." The horse tossing his head like he's carrying the queen through that snow. Proud and full of hot air, prancing along.

When we got back to the barn everything was coated in thin and airy snow and the dirt roads were beginning to turn white (I love it when that happens). I let the dog out of the trailer-- he always looks a little yellow against that white white-- and we jumped in the truck and drove the horse home.

When I got back to my home, there was not a spot of snow on the ground. It was like the ride in the snow never happened, but for my chapped face and lips. The snow may not have changed the day at my house, but it did make me feel like hunkering down and getting some quilting done. So, although it took me a while to get here, I present block 6 of the quilt-along. I'm really digging the batiks in these two, especially the smaller squares in the block on the right. *By the way, that Grady photo at the top was taken last February, but you get the idea. I hope we get some truly snowy days like that this year!

Catching up

I spent some time this week doing some catching up on AmandaJean's quilt-along. I'm still not quite there, but here are the blocks from week 4. I wish that I was better at piecing and could have made the four pairs of half-square triangles on each side of the blocks (in the background charcoal color) out of one triangle. But this is not the first time that I have tried and failed to make that type of measurement work out. So this will have to do for now. And here are the blocks for week 7. I like that a lot of these blocks have a very diagonal energy to them. I think that's what might end up making my quilt work. I have a couple of ideas for setting these blocks in the finished quilt, and I'm looking forward to trying them out when the 12 weeks are up and I have 24 blocks.
But right now I have some more catching up to do. Week 5's blocks are in progress, and week 6 and week 8 still remain to be done. Happy weekend, all!

Fall Quilt-along: Block 3

Boy, what a grey week. These blocks are my contribution for week 3 of crazy mom quilts' fall quilt-along. The grey skies and plummeting temperatures are definitely reflected in these photos-- it was tough to get any kind of true colors at all this week.

Fall Quilt-along: Block 2

Here's my contribution for the second block in AmandaJean's quilt-along. I'm hoping that these will begin to look leafier and more fall-like once there are more blocks. I'm still loving these batiks.

Fall Quilt-along: Block 1

I have joined AmandaJean's fall quilt-along over at Crazy Mom Quilts. The first block was great fun, and a good contrast from the tiny Dear Jane blocks that I've been working on over the past few months. These blocks came out 12.5" square. My thinking about the color scheme goes like this:

You know that moment in the spring when you step into the woods and suddenly everything is green? And it feels like a surprise because you could have sworn you were just there yesterday and all the trees and paths were grey and dead-looking? Well, for me there's a moment like that in the fall, too.

It usually happens after the first really good, really cold autumn rain storm around here-- the first day after the first really cold, wet night, when all the leaves are guaranteed to be changing. I was walking the pup in the park near our house last week, and the timing was perfect. I looked up to see slick, dark grey tree trunks broken up by bright yellow and orange and green leaves. And again, that autumn light, so clear and sharp, the light that makes the colors glow.

Up until now, all of my quilts (and I use the term loosely, as I'm much more interested in the patchwork than the quilting... I'll let you make of that what you will) have had light backgrounds, or have been so scrappy that their general value came out somewhere in the middle. So I was excited to try something with a dark background. The charcoal grey color is actually truer in the first photo, paired with the green batik, but it's interesting how the different contrast colors can play with our (and the camera's) perception of the grey. I'll use all batiks, in greens and golds and oranges, with a few reds and dark blues thrown in as the accent colors. I'm going to make two of each square in the quilt-along, in the hope that I'll come out with a queen-sized sampler quilt.

I'm hoping that I can capture some of that magic that I feel walking into that wet and bright leafy woods each fall.