Fourth of July at Home in Maine

 

The Fourth of July quilt is now at home with my friend Bob, who lives near the seacoast in Maine.

We "met" over 20 years ago when I was at a seminar for our ERP software. I had recently installed an upgrade that had gone badly, and had needed some help. At the seminar I complained that the bug I had found had NOT been fixed online and I didn't want anybody else to encounter the same problems I had had. During a break, two gentlemen approached me. Their company used the same software and were planning an upgrade in a few days. Would I be willing to talk to their IT guy and tell him what to do?

Of course I would.

The next day I spent an hour on the phone with Bob, and told him what to do.

It worked, and the next week he called to thank me. It turned out we each had skills the other lacked.  This began a long relationship. If I was stumped I'd call Bob and he'd help me out. When he had questions he'd give me a call. Bob was funny and I could call him if I needed to vent, and he'd listen. Whenever there was an upgrade, we'd go through the details together and report back with our findings. 

I think it was ten years before I met him in person. Every single year on my birthday, I would get a call from Bob, and he would sing to me. Every single year on his birthday I did the same. He always made me laugh.

Bob moved from that job to another, and then another. We still kept in touch. During the pandemic, he knew I was alone and working from home. He'd call or we'd chat or FaceTime. On those lonely holidays, I'd get a text and he'd ask if I was OK.

Last spring, when I was working on the Fourth of July quilt, he texted me and asked how I was. We went back and forth, and then I sent him a picture of the lighthouse panel I had bought and decided to use on the back of the quilt.

"Which lighthouse is that?" he asked. I replied that it was probably a generic lighthouse, since it didn't look like any lighthouse in this area. We New Englanders tend to know our regional lighthouses.

We signed off, and I looked over at the quilt and the lighthouse panel.

New England.

Seacoast.

Lighthouse.

Friend.

Right away I knew I would give the quilt to Bob. I thought he might be embarrassed, so I thought some more. Then I worked out how long we had been buddies. It was 1997 or 1998. That's well over 20 years.

In all that time Bob has never forgotten my birthday. He has always made me laugh and smile. That was enough. When the quilt was done, I put it in the mail and sent it to Bob in Maine.

It arrived on Thursday.

"This is really cool," he texted, "but I expect to see a bill."

No freaking way, I texted back.

"You really are a beautiful person... Thank you, thank you, thank you."

We went back and forth. "20 years," I said, "Actually I think it's closer to 26" he said. "I should ask you how to wash it."

I told him in was in the document I sent. "Read it. There will be a quiz later."

Later I got another text, "I will get you a nice grandma rated picture of me and my new quilt. I love it, it is gorgeous. I would like to use it on my bed as a nice top cover, but it is so nice I am afraid to use it... I like the book you sent with the story. That is really cool. Did you know that one of the things my wife and I would like to do when we retire is to go see all the lighthouses in the East Coast?"

On Friday I got another text. "I want you to know I showed your quilt to several people and every single one of them thought it was beautiful and well made.

"Thank you again."

Update: I added the photo Bob sent me wrapped in his quilt.  

Mo' Bags

 My boss sent me home early today. 

When I got home, I made this lined bag. It's the biggest bag, called a laundry bag.

The body of the bag is the leftover backing from The Colorado Quilt. I can't remember why I bought the dragon fabric. The lining is a cream fabric I bought a few years ago because... I can't quite remember.

After dinner I made this bag, for somebody who should be really obvious. Check out the fabrics. Sewing machines...

Spools of thread...

Pincushions on the lining.  Did you notice the measuring tape on the ties?

Yes, this will go to my best friend Julie, and I am sure it will take many trips from New Hampshire to Tennessee over the years as it goes back and forth.

Later today when we go around the table and say what we are thankful for I will say two things. The Covid vaccine and friends.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Pandemic Fashion!

A week or so ago I made masks for my son and his family, and sent them to the City of Angels. Yesterday they sent me this picture.

"They are so comfy," my DIL wrote. "Little Miss loves hers and does not want to take it off. They fit perfectly, nice and snug around the nose."

Now, they live in California, and that means they can't even leave their own property, so they can't take a walk down the street. We all know my granddaughter probably won't go out at all, but there was no way I was NOT going to make her a mask. And OF COURSE it had to have dinosaurs!

This is me with one of the masks I made for myself. I have a pair, so I can always have a clean one if I need to go out.

Although I'm not going out. The only time I go out is to go down to the mail house to collect my mail, and whether I walk or drive, I wear a mask.

One of my coworkers saw the masks I had made for the production workers and asked if I could make some masks for her and her family. She had tried to buy some, but had no luck.

Tell me how much and I will pay you, she texted.

Well, gee, I wrote back, if you're still going to the grocery store, here is what I would like as payment:

1 bunch of parsley
1 bunch of cilantro
2 or 3 avocados
1 bag of spinach
1 bunch of asparagus
1 box of linguine

A few hours later, my grateful friend delivered two grocery bags of green stuff for me.

The masks for the rest of her family are almost ready!

Nada!

I've known for some time the Not Paper Pieced quilt had some problems. It seemed top-heavy. I was more interested in getting the NOs built to see how the NOs would work as a border. I figured I'd get to the rest of it in due time.

My friend Julie, however, had been giving it some serious thought. Yesterday I got a text from her, "What happens to your Not Paper Pieced quilt if you remove that initial NO...?"

I thought it Julie's idea made a lot of sense.

I added the word NADA and rearranged some of the other NOs.

 Here is where I am going. I removed the black butterfly too.

Friends don't let friends screw up their quilts.  Thanks Julie!! I am much more confident about where this quilt is going now.

Twenty Pounds

Quilters are the most generous people on the planet! My friend Gail asked if I needed replenishments of any color in my stash. I said I could use some yellow and maybe some green.  Imagine my surprise when the package she sent (which I assumed would be a small squishie) turned out to be a "torso-sized" carton weighing 20 pounds!

Even Millie had to check it out. I was positively gob-smacked, thrilled and humbled. Thank you Gail, so so much! I can't wait to delve into this and have fun with the goodies inside.

The Block Bag Brigade

So last week I filled a bag with the leftover Gizzy blocks.

Then I made arrangements to pass the bag to my friend Mary.

She met me at work last week. Here you can see me passing the bag to her. "Omigosh," Mary said to me, "this bag is HEAVY."

The next day, Mary passed the bag along to Sarah, Mary's "wonderfully creative friend, an expert at putting pieces of fabric from many sources into quilts for abused or ill children and for adults recovering from surgery or other health problems. She was thrilled to accept your gift."

I'm glad all those blocks are going to be turned into something good. If you have fabric you can't stand looking at, or an abandoned project that is taking up space in your house, there is always someone who will be glad to take it off your hands and make magic with it. You just have to find them.

Busy Weekend

This is my pal Kathy French, one of the SSOBB members, who visited me on Saturday. She and her husband stopped by on their way home from Vermont. We had a nice visit. Isn't the color of her jacket terrific?

I sewed a few of my scrappy triangle blocks together. The bottom photo is back side of the block.  All the backs of my quilts look like this. Neat, with no straggly threads.

My sewing machine has to go back to the shop. It doesn't cut the threads consistently and it makes a noise when I sew like two pieces of metal are banging against each other. Bummer. The guy opens and closes within my normal work day and isn't open any evenings, so it means a Saturday visit and a week without my machine. Argh.


I spent a lot of the rest of the weekend organizing a calendar of my quilts for 2017, doing a bit of online shopping, paying bills and reconciling the checkbook. I've been neglecting the avalanche of paper on my desk, and at least now I've made a dent in it. The shredder will be getting a workout soon.

Oh, and whoever asked about making "slabs," here's a link to a blog post where I talk about how I do it.

Two Thousand

This blog started with this quilt, way back in 2008.

It was my first free pieced quilt. It has the first free pieced letters I ever made, and the quilt included the butterflies I designed. I didn't know what the hell I was doing, and I spent as much time swearing at this quilt as I did sewing on it. It's got as emotional a story as any quilt can get, and it means the world to me.

From there to here,

This quilt was published in Tonya Ricucci's "Word Play Quilts." This sampler quilt is based on traditional New England needlework samplers which often included a house along with the maker's name and location.

and here,

The sentence in this quilt is an example of a pangram, which uses every letter in the alphabet at least once. It was my way of making a sampler that wasn't a sampler.

from jumping foxes,

I made five versions of Katharine Hepburn's famous quote. This is the first.

and rules,

Every quilter makes at least one quilt with colors of the rainbow. Mine just happens to have nine letter words.

and nine letter words,

My friend Julie made this quilt out of all my dud letters and orphan blocks. I love it so much it lives on my bed to this day.

 and duds that surely aren't,

I wanted to see how far I could break rules. The answer was pretty far. The end result though, looked like it fell out of a jewel box. The quilt was laughing at me. So I named it "Laughing Out Loud."

and laughing out loud,

I made this quilt as a sample to sell a class I was teaching about making free pieced houses. Little did I know the effect this quilt would have on my pal Julie Sefton. It is published in her book "Build A Barn."

 
and wonky houses,

An image of an open box combined with Twyla Tharp's famous quilt inspired this quilt.

boxes,

This is another quilt I made as a sample to sell a class I was teaching.

birds and butterflies,

This was the result when a plan for a baby quilt I was making went sideways. You learn a lot more from your mistakes and recoveries than you do from your successes.

 colors,

A conversation with a waitress inspired this quilt, which won an Honorable Mention at AQS Chattanooga 2016.

chickens,

This is the fourth of a series of Crayons quilts. The plan for this quilt came to me in a dream. Really.

Crayons of all varieties,
 

I didn't give this quilt much thought as I was making it. I was on "automatic pilot." Just goes to show you have to guard against overthinking.

curves,

A suggestion from a student got me playing with long triangles that used curves instead of straight lines.

 
and more curves,

My friend Julie asked me to be a Charter Member of the Secret Society of Barn Builders, so I made this barn quilt.

barns,

I designed this quilt one piece of fabric at a time.

Diamonds,

My friend Daniela suggested I make birds based on people I know. So many of these birds represent real people in my life.

and still more birds,

My granddaughter was born in August 2016.

and a very special baby,

...you have accompanied me on this journey of two thousand posts.

In the eight years it has taken me to reach this number, my life has changed dramatically, and for the better. For those of you who read every day, I salute you. For those of you who comment and let me hear your voice, my most heartfelt thanks. For those of you who reached beyond the technology and have become my friends, (from Maryland to Tennessee, to California and Missouri, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) words cannot express my gratitude and joy.

None of this... And I mean NONE OF THIS, would ever have been possible without you.

Thanks.

Bread

Yup, you read that right. Bread.

Six loaves of my English Muffin Bread. You can find the recipe here, and you can make it even if you think you can't bake bread.

I made two loaves yesterday and they disappeared within an hour.

So, I got up this morning and made six loaves. One is already gone.

Tracey's oldest son got his hair cut yesterday. I thought it was funny he looked so much like the guy in the poster.

These two are just too cute.

I'm having a grand time.