I just finished the second row of blocks and sashing for the new project. My version is infinitely more my taste than the original that was all of those "country" colors from the late 20th century. I did make a few of those rust, brown, and black quilts back in the day but they were never my favorite choices. The colors I have chosen make this quilt more dramatic and yet still quite sprightly rather than depressing.

 

The block size now is 15 inches with two inch sashing. Most of the fabrics are from my stash but the background is a newer fabric, off white with small bright triangles. It's called Homemade Salsa. Making all the elements 25% smaller made for some intricate applique, including the very small openings, just barely visible, that are supposed to indicate where the angels blowing the trumpets have their arms separated from their bodies. the interior sashing is going to be all this green and white checked fabric and the outer sashing before the final border is the same green and white with a two inch outer sash of the black background floral, not the black background pin dot that makes the trumpeting angels, trees, and parts of the birds. My husband asked me if this is supposed to be a Christmas quilt but  I am not sure even if there are elements that are common to Christmas. The bottom row will have sunflowers, crows, and rabbits, and the outer border will have crows, rabbits, and foxes.   

I have been making so many floral and bird quilts that are closer to real life flowers and birds so doing these with their simple shapes that merely represent a tree or bird has been entertaining. If you go to my post from May 30th of this year, you can see the black floral in an entirely different guise. That quilt which I had originally called My Funny Valentine got renamed as Grey Skies Are Gonna Clear Up when my neighbors' daughter got dumped at the altar. It now hangs in her apartment in Chicago.

 I have been working on a quilt from a very old Red Wagon book. The original quilt was enormous (90 x 90) so the first thing I did was reduce everything by 25%. The second step was to switch out the late 90s colors of brown, rust, and black to more lively colors. I like what I have gotten done so far.

 

 Although I have had this book for a few decades, I had only made one of the quilts previously and that one was a pieced quilt. Working on an applique quilt from the book has proven to be a more frustrating experience as the instructions are about as basic as instructions can get: "Refer to the photo for placement." That doesn't help much at all in trying to make everything symmetrical and balanced appropriately.  Luckily with folk art, perfection is rarely the goal.

 This quilt will never be a prize winner for any number of reasons but I expect it will serve its purpose to make a two year old smile. When I was a little kid, one of my favorite toys was a yo-yo clown. These yo-yos were the sort made out of fabric and the fascination for me was the interplay of colors and prints. That was part of my idea in using so many wild prints, mostly from Tula Pink. I had a very old extra thick crib batt that makes it fluffy and puffy. I rarely use the thick batts since I do all hand quilting.

I am calling this "Live Long and Prosper" and I incorporate Mr. Spock's hand gesture that Leonard Nimoy in turn took from an Orthodox Jewish blessing ritual. It represents the Hebrew letter "shin" that carries various connotations including peace as it is the first letter in "Shalom". My husband said that he thought modern remakes of the Star Trek tv show are common enough that the baby's parents, though quite young, will be familiar with. I am not so sure but it doesn't matter to me.

I made the binding wider than usual expecting it to be tugged on repeatedly.

 So here is the new baby quilt as laid out for basting. Part of my goal in making this was to include multiple learning opportunities, from colors, to numbers, to same/different. On top of that the back is a very wild piece of fabric that has all sorts of animals in funny clothes from giraffes to hippos. I didn't want anyone to think this was a precious family heirloom--I want it to be loved and shredded by the time this kid is 18.

 

 

 My husband and I got an invitation to a birthday party about a week ago which means the birthday party is only 3.5 weeks away. The party is for a two year old boy on our street and I am delighted to be invited to his special day but I didn't just want to show up with a teddy bear or something. Funny story: last year when he turned one, I left a best wishes card, a teddy bear, and a small homegrown pumpkin at his front door. Later that day his dad told us that he loved the bear and had spent the entire morning rolling the pumpkin around and seemed to love that as well. But as babies do, he got tired so they put him to bed and as new parents do, his mother and father lay down as well. When everyone got up they went downstairs and found no trace but some orange smears of the pumpkin and a dog who desperately needed to go out. You probably already know what happened to the small pumpkin but the sweet pitbull named Nana had devoured it and needed to get rid of the evidence.

Anyway, this party has a rocket to the moon theme so I have been sewing like mad to make a small rocket and astronaut quilt for this two year old. I will have pictures soon.

As an update to my own medical news, I met my new doctor a few days ago, had a bunch of blood drawn, and had a shoulder to groin CT scan. So far the only new information that has developed is that I have a heretofore unknown ruptured lumbar vertebrae (I knew my lower back hurt) and some growth on an ovary or fallopian tube. The CT scan could not tell whether it is a cyst or something more dangerous so I have already scheduled a trans-vaginal ultrasound. If that sounds like a whole lot of fun on an early morning visit to a doctor then you already know what is involved. If it turns out to be cancer I might change my mind about not being a litigious person since the previous doctor could have ordered a scan two years ago. 

  

 My latest project is quilted though it isn't a quilt. Some years ago I went to Big Lots in Salt Lake City where I picked up a decorative bowl for $3.00. It mimics the classic Tobacco Leaf pattern but clearly at that price it is frankly fake. Didn't and doesn't matter to me as long as it looks all right. We didn't use it on our dining room table until recently when my husband accidentally broke a crystal bowl that used to be in the middle of the table. The bowl just didn't go with the various items we used for protection of the table. The latest "runner" underneath the bowl was one of my late mother-in-law's obi, lovely thick silk but not in the right colors. Plus obi are such a strange size (14 feet by 11 inches) that I had to fold it several times to fit .

 

So I decided to make a runner whose colors would be more compatible. This pattern was about 30 years old, a small wall hanging designed by Pat Andreatta, that I modified in some ways to blend with my fake Tobacco Leaf bowl. I just finished it and unlike the quilts I make it didn't required soaking to remove the markings. The applique markings were in chalk  and those disappeared as I sewed. I didn't mark any quilt lines as the background fabric obscures the quilting anyway--navy blue on navy blue--so I just did a loose meander to hold the layers together after I added quilting to the applique bits.

 

As with most projects I learned a few things, especially appliqueing all those tight little curlicues. I have done curlicues before but these were much smaller in overall scale and also in the width of the bias strips. The first lesson I learned was to work on top of a firm surface that I could hold on my lap while sewing and rotate that rather than rotate my cloth. The second lesson was to weight the curlicues after they were sewn by putting them on my ironing board with that same flat firm surface and my iron (turned off of course). That final step made a huge difference in how the curlicues look, going from decent but a little scrunchy to lying completely flat on the surface.  If anyone is curious about the yellow birds, goldfinches are the state bird of Pennsylvania.