Seahorses...in hexagons!

An original design BY ME, using the cutest little fussy cut seahorses. I used the swiss-cheese leftovers from the same print as the blue segments, and a coordinate for the striped pinwheels. I had planned to leave the top and bottom edges hex-shaped, but the shape looked weird on this baby-size quilt, so I filled in the pink in the middle, but I left the corners angled. The quilting is a simple meander with pink variegated Sulky.

Hexagonal seahorses!

Now I don't have to think about what to do with this cute panel -- it was the perfect size for the back of this cute little quilt!

Triangle scraps

I made a mid-scale Lotus quilt using the Forest Floor line of fabrics, and I couldn't bear to part with the neat stack of evenly trimmed equilateral triangles leftover from cutting all the jewel shapes. I shaved them down a little with my Mini Hex n More ruler and pulled out a stack of 1.5" strips of neutrals. I didn't measure the strips at all, I just cut all of their ends at 60-degree angles.

I added triangles to even the smallest bits of neutrals (even other 1" triangles), then ganged those units together until I had a bunch of strips that were just short of 19". Once I had the strips long enough (a totally subjective determination), I sewed them together kind of randomly, choosing strips that gave the right balance to the project. I have been feeling like I don't do enough "freeform" projects, but I prefer this sort of halfway compromise -- starting with precision-cut pieces, then assembling them without pre-determining where they're going to fall.

I love this little wall hanging! What I particularly like about it is that the eye keeps wandering looking for a pattern -- that's what our species excels at! -- but there isn't one. I think I'll call this one "Pareidolia in Scraps".

Scrap equilateral triangles...don't throw away those Hex n More cutoffs!

American Banner

At long last, a few photos of the quilt that my then-10-now-11-year-old designed and made over the last year. He has named it "American Banner." I have a little label to sew onto the back, then it will hang in the GHQG show this weekend.

"American Banner" (54 x 54"), original design by Linus.

He did all of the quilting himself, using a red-white-and-blue Sulky Blendables to do diagonal cross-hatching with a wavy line stitch.

Quilting detail.

He was very involved in every step of the process, from the original graph-paper sketch, to selecting the fabrics (including the back, about which he was VERY particular), to doing all of the cutting, pinning, piecing, pressing, and quilting. I only helped with the pin basting and the binding. The hardest part for me was being patient enough to not care when his attention span petered out with only one little bit left -- but I guess that's the trick with all parenting behavior. He is already in the early planning stages of his next project, and has a goal of entering a quilt into the Vermont Quilt Festival next summer.

Journal Project: Love

The theme that my journal quilting group selected for this February's project was Love. I used a fairly predictable interpretation, a depiction of another Charley Harper print called "Vowlentine." I love the clean lines and geometry of his illustrations, and I really love how he used the heart shapes to represent this cozy family of barn owls.

"Vowlentine" by Charley Harper (1922-2007)

In addition, just as I was getting started on this project, my friend Mary recently shared a poem that really spoke to me, like a slightly sunnier, more nature-oriented version of Rilke:

The Summer Day

Mary Oliver

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

I love those last two lines so much. I am a fairly cynical and pessimistic -- sometimes nihilistic -- person, and I have really been working hard to give my boys some sense of hope and wonder in what often seems like a shitstorm of a world...these words so perfectly express my hope that they will grow into men who seek adventure and challenges, and who will recognize happiness when it hits them.

"Love" (8.5 x 11")

storm quilting

I had this great...if ambitious...mental schedule for finishing my monthly challenge projects after our Halloween party. Now, however, in the face of power outages, I have run out of time. I did manage to complete a nice lap/crib-size top for the Color Palette challenge. This month's inspiration is a wonderful Kandinsky:

I have had some perfect Dan Bennett fabric maturing in the closet for about a year...now is its time to shine. I found some almost-solids in every color in the palette chosen by Vicki Welsh, and a scrap of coordinating polka dots.Here's my "solution":

I edited the post to put in a better-lit photo. Love this bright cheerful, colorful little quilt!

I think our hatches have been sufficiently battened, and we are well stocked for comestibles and potables (potent and otherwise). If you need heat or a hot shower over the next few days, please call. We have a nifty furnace/thermostat setup that runs on the pilot light rather than electricity, so as long as gas service isn't interrupted we should be fine. Plus, we bought a little generator after last year so we can keep our freezer safe and occasionally fire up the modem and recharge devices. Stay safe, fellow east coasters.

And that, my friends, is my first Kindle-created blog post! My darling husband recently gave me a Kindle Fire HD for our 12th (!) anniversary. I love this little device so much that I suspect he might be regretting it a little (not really...just kidding).

(Edited on a grown-up computer to replace the photo. And to add that my friend Laurel pointed out that the sashing fabric looks like the projection tracks for the hurricane...so I'll be naming this one "Tracking Sandy". Thanks, Laurel!)

Perfect Quilt of Perfect Squares

A year or so ago, I saw a book of mathematics-derived patterns for crafting. One that appealed to me immediately was drafted for cross stitch, but I thought I could easily adapt it for quilting. It's based on the concept of "perfect square dissection," in which a square is divided into smaller squares all of different sizes. Easy peasy.


I decided to make the 21-square version, with all numbers divided in two to make reasonable size patches that finish into a 56-inch square quilt. I had a bunch of black and whites that I'd been collecting for nothing in particular, so I started pressing and cutting and had the pieces ready in only a few hours. (Hey, there are only 21 pieces in this quilt!) I spent a little extra time embroidering the Ganesh figure in black thread on white Kona, because I thought it balanced the batik panel that my friend Sara had given me, and I really like that Ganesh design -- it's also on my dining room in gold thread on a rich red valance. The whole top went together in only a couple of hours; the only slightly tricky part was figuring out which partial seams to sew, and in which order.


This top sat in my UFO bin for about a year, but I have been making good progress through that bin, so its number was up. I basted it two weeks ago, and quilted a very simple meander over the whole thing using Sulky Blendables in the "Piano Keys" color. I switched to plain black for the batik panel and plain white for the Ganesh square.

"Perfect Squares" (56 x 56")

Summary: I stone cold love how this came out. I'm eager to make this in different colors, from primary solids to Kaffe Fassett prints to batiks. I see this particular prototype as a wall hanging, but it would also be perfect for a baby in a sufficiently geeky family (Perfect Squares for the Perfect Baby!) I am planning to write up this pattern in case anyone else wants to make one.