The journey of quilting, gardening, and seeing the world

I would never call myself a quilter. On the contrary, I surely am anything but a quilter. Nor am I a knitter, or a cook, or any of the other things I occasionally toy with.

I suppose I could say I am an accountant and a (former) musician because those are things at which I felt I had some special expertise.

At the heart of ALL the things I like to do (the occasional quilt, playing with my knitting needles, cooking, and even accounting and music), though, I think it's the journey that attracts me and spurs me on as I get lost in any of these lovely things to do.

Where will this road take me? What traps will I uncover? What are the surprises? What will I learn about the world, or even about myself, during this journey? These questions are my motivations. This might be equated to dream time for me. Dream time - getting lost in the flow of the journey - is probably part of an underlying trait that enables me to work at jobs I haven't always liked when others threw up their hands. These questions probably motivate my joy in the travel Lauren and I are able to do. What's ahead? What's this feel like? What secret (unknown to me) will I uncover? How will I grow?

The journey of this new quilt makes me realize how very much I enjoy our meager little garden. Although I've read about a quilt being inspired by nature, I had never been inspired before now. This new idea comes as I realize it was probably the image of our garden that attracted me to Fassett's Pink Square Clamshell. Our garden is the image I see all the time from our sunroom, the room that holds my work space.


I've been especially pleased these last few weeks to see this yellow rose come back from what has probably been a dormant period encouraged by the neglect of the last few years while I was working so intensely. It is blooming like crazy, and the leaves look so healthy. I've been paying particular attention to it recently, spraying it with Ortho Rose Pride hoping to spur it back to life, feeding it, and making sure it had plenty of water. I believe it was so diseased with black spot that it just didn't have a heart left. To see this bloom again - there must be more than a half a dozen blooms on the bush - provides such a joyous feeling.

I always get a kick out of this pink-yellow rose. It begins with a bud that's almost coral, tinged with yellow, then it blooms as yellow, and then changes to this pink-white lovely thing before it is no more. Throughout its life, it seems as though it becomes everything it would ever want to be - maybe an idea for the rest of us. The coral rose, just a bit further away in the picture, seems to be sitting like a cup today, open to let the sunshine pour in.

In the background, of course, you can see the angelonias that must be the primary inspiration for my color choices for this quilt.

I've been watching this fuchsia for the last couple weeks, wondering if that little pink capsule was ever going to burst open, and here it is. What a delight to see the violet center. The beautiful pink holds a precious jewel.


The quilt is progressing. I needed a proof of concept after I finished the paper layout, so I cut and put together one square to see if I liked anything about it. Seemed good to me, and I'm up to five squares now, enough to start getting a better grasp on what I want to do with the quilting. I think I'm going to like this a lot. I will spend time this weekend watching some movies, cutting squares, and then laying out the 7 x 7 squares so I can put them together. I've found that if I keep all the pieces for one 7 x 7 square, stacked in the sequence I need to put them together for rows, in a folder, it works well. I pick up a folder, do all my strips in that folder, leave the strips in the same folder, and then pick up the next one. Once I get to the sewing machine, the work is pretty automated and my mind isn't too heavily engaged, so I listen to books on CD or podcasts while I work.


During commercials while I was catching up on my TIVO'd season premier TV shows, I sketched out a possible quilting plan for this quilt. I really enjoyed not being so traditional on my bedspread quilt, so I thought I'd like to take this one a step further. I'd like to avoid staying in the lines. I don't know if this idea will work or not, but it might be worth a try.

It's such a lovely day today - sunny and bright. We've had a couple overcast days that seriously spoke of fall, and I had the biggest urge to fix some hot chocolate and start thinking about holidays. I had to laugh because we haven't done much for holidays since Mom died in 2003. One year, we even went on a cruise during the Thanksgiving holiday. Ah, what old people do (or don't do) when they're left on their own. We are definitely new to this stage of our lives, but we're figuring out how to do it and enjoy the time we have together.

I got up early this morning and worked out some possible travel dates for my personal (without Lauren) visits in the spring. I love spending the week with Judy, nestled on her trundle bed in her sewing room, watching videos and talking sewing and other things, with a visit to the Quilt Museum in Paduccah, among other things; and, of course, going to the Philippines is too special to describe. I will make all my reservations in just a couple weeks! Not too long now!