A REALLY SCRAPPY QUILT

I know, it's been far too long since I posted.  My apologies!  There has been just too much going on, and I'll mention that later, but for now, just "hot off the needle" a really, really scrappy quilt.

We in the sewing room are gifted with many, many fabrics.  There was a small stack of 5" squares, and my friend Joan had brought two long strips of "piano keys" meaning sidewise small strips sewn together.  I had finished the last quilt I was working on for the sewing room and was looking for another project.  We combined the strips with the 5" squares, cut them apart and arranged them in this order, "sandwiched" them and yesterday I machine quilted them in a meander pattern and bound them with the left over fabric from the backing.  We think it's kind of cute and proof that you can put anything together in a scrappy quilt.  The squares that look black are actually navy print fabrics.  So this makes a third finish this year for the Sewing Room's stack of quilts to give away.

Here is the second finish:

 

This quilt, like the next one was printed material that we "sandwiched," quilted and bound.  A rather plain quilt, but perhaps someone will like it.  And the first finish (actually first in order of time) was also printed fabric, "sandwiched," machine quilted and bound.  Not a bad tally for the time spent on them.  

 

Now I'm desiring to make a quilt "from scratch"--not just a printed piece of material, but make the blocks, sew them together and make a "real" quilt.  In the quilt room on Thursday three of us were joking around about a remark a very, very precise woman made a few years ago.  She said, offhand to a woman she was teaching how to quilt, that what we made were not "real quilts"!  We decided to call them "stuffed blankets."

The very first thing I did here this fall was get the binding on this nice little December wall hanging that is currently on our patio wall.  I don't have a hanging for January, so maybe I'll leave this one up for a few weeks yet.

                           

Another project finished just this past week was a pair of socks for my brother-in-law.  He really loves his hand-knit socks so I make him a pair every year.  I started these at the end of September but finished them only last week, a pair for Christmas instead of his birthday this year.  The picture is actually of last year's socks for our grandson, but I neglected to take a picture of Wayne's socks which were the same, so substituted this picture for the one I forgot to take.

There have also been rehearsals and concerts, so much fun!  Here's a snap or two from the Santa Lucia Christmas Concert at church.  My friend Nan took these pictures:

                                 

There were three choirs involved, and a bell choir, piano, organ, small orchestra.  Quite a group to manage all together.  We had a total of 900 people attending over the two nights.  A really good crowd, considering the church seats 480 people!

It's evident I enjoyed it:

That Friday morning Nan and I attended a short Jr.Hi. concert in the Community Center foyer.  This school comes every year to serenade us.  There was a small string group (5 violins and 2 cellos), a fairly large choir (to the left waiting for their turn) and a small band group.  The choir was amazing!  They had memorized all their songs--at least twelve and were obviously enjoying singing.  One girl in the back row was so into the songs, swaying and waving her hands.  One young boy in the front row chewed busily on some gum in between phrases!  What a hoot!

Because the choir had memorized their songs they were all almost always watching the director.  Kudos to them!  I look forward to these musical treats each year.

The Sun Cities Orchestra did not give a December concert this year, but we have one coming up the last Sunday of January.  Something more to look forward to!

Plus there has been lots of choir music.  In addition to the concert we sing at services each Sunday.  This morning I played Brahm's "Lo How a Rose Ere Blooming" on the organ during communion, and I've played a few violin pieces and a viola piece during various services.  AAAH, what a lot of fun I've had!

So, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!

A PROJECT & TWO BOOKS

I've been working on a quilt project here at our S.V. quilting group for a few years.  It's a red, white and blue quilt that I started maybe two or three years ago.  Making the blocks was a breeze, but when I went to put them together I discovered that all the blue/white blocks needed to be repressed in different directions in order for the seams to "nest" with the red/white blocks.  It's a HUGE PAIN!!!  I now have 6 our of 9 rows repressed and sewed together, but I am sick of it.

So I picked up a quilt that had been 505'd together last year but never quilted.  505 is a temporary adhesive that many quilters use (and love) to hold the three layers together -- without wrinkles -- when doing the machine quilting.  This fabric was in the sewing room, one of many, many pieces of fabric that are donated from time to time.  It was printed to look as if it had been pieced in the Wedding Ring pattern.  This is called a "cheater" quilt.

Last weekend in about 3 hours I machined quilted along the pretend piecing and then bound the quilt with prefolded binding.  On Monday I washed it because the fabric had been sitting in the cupboard so long.  It will make a nice lap quilt for some child.

This week I'm reading an interesting book, Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson.  My cousin Joan had mentioned it to me and I bought it at the nearby Barnes and Nobles.  The subtitle is "The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste."  And it certainly is the ultimate Guide.  Bea discusses step by step, room by room, how to achieve a Zero Waste home and lifestyle.  Her suggestions are well taken, but probably go beyond what most of us are willing to do.  Her wardrobe is extremely limited.  And although I will follow some of her suggestions I will retain a lot of clothing in my closet that is not worn often, just because I like to have a fair bit of variety to choose from.  Some days a plain, even severe "costume" seems appropriate and other days I like to dress colourfully to express my joy in life.

 

Still, this is a good book to buy, read, and keep on hand for suggestions.  Recommended.

I read another very interesting and encouraging book recently, Our Towns, by James and Deborah Fallows.  We saw an interview with this couple on t.v. awhile ago and that made me interested in buying their book.  I highly recommend this perceptive and hopeful book.

They spent four years travelling around the U.S. investigating the health of towns and small cities (43 in all) some not so small.  They looked into several areas of interest: local government, business, education, sports and arts, the whole panoply of what makes up our social environment, to see what was working well and what strategies towns and small cities were employing to better their possibilities for a well-working present and a hopeful future.  At the local level there is an entirely different discourse from the aggressive, divisive national conversation which is more like "verbal war."

About Erie, Pennsylvania they write on page 384: "The point that comes back to us is the starkness of the contrast: on the one hand the flattened terms -- "angry," resentful," "hopeless" -- the language the media and politicians use to describe America in general; on the other hand, the engaged, changing realities people understand about the places where they actually live.  The point may sound banal, but it has consequences.  In the very same terrain that was just described as Rust Belt loser land in a big presidential-campaign rally, and whose urban landscape clearly shows the structural and human makes of traumatic change, people are trying to anticipate and adapt to those changes, to improve their individual and collective futures, and generally to behave as if they are actors in their own dramas, rather than just being acted upon.  Being active, rather than passive, is one working definition of today's American idea."

The following sentence is remarkable in explaining Erie's source of hope: "Erie finds a hyper charged boost of optimism and energy from another sizeable portion of its population: refugees and immigrants."  Their explorations in Dodge City, Kansas, also reveals a remarkable story of how refugees and immigrants are essential to recovery in a depressed area.  Such a different insight from the coverage of Dodge City's troubles during the recent Mid Term elections!

If you'd like to be encouraged and cheered about the possibilities ahead for the US. this is the book to read!