Quilts: Finished and In Progress

Unless quilt projects are of interest, this rambling photo-heavy post will bore you!

I decided, on a gloomy Sunday afternoon in March, to undertake a sorting of fabric and projects.

There are four deep drawers holding my stash of [mostly] Moda fabrics acquired during the years I worked at Wyoming Quilts. These are carefully folded according to designer 'lines.' Several large covered bins hold quality yardage purchased from retailers who offered 'flat folds.'

Then there are the inevitable 'remnants' of different shapes and sizes, left from completed projects. Most disheartening was the cache of 'orphan blocks' and scattered components of such, rejected in the final assembly of a given quilt, but too good to toss out, so tucked away in an assortment of zipper bags and small containers.

The thought of starting fresh projects, finally using some of my lovely hoard, was appealing, but quickly followed by the realization that this would inevitably result in more 'scraps.'

It had been several years since I tackled unfinished sewing, time to revive my New England sense of Yankee thrift and get on with it.

This is the large daylight room in the walk-out lower lever of the house. It was planned as a family room/living area, but was never used as such. Several years ago I moved my sewing machine from the adjacent large guest room, but didn't then undertake any rearrangement of furniture.

On a morning in early July I announced that changes were needed. 

Jim, who was working for Howard at the time, rolled his eyes, snorted, made noises about people who are 'always' hurting their backs hoiking things around. [That would be me!]

Howard resignedly offered that if I would empty the furniture pieces needing to be shifted he would stop back and do it after work.

With the men out of the way, I had a little think and decided I could do this. My spacial concepts aren't great, so I knew I'd better do some measuring and planning or I'd wear myself out getting furniture stuck where it didn't belong. 

Howard's dogs and several of our cats assembled to watch me unplug sewing machines, unload cupboard shelves, move storage boxes and assorted vintage treasures. 

In the above photo you can see the final arrangement of the two sewing spaces. I can easily scoot my chair between the two machines if need be.

I keep the Janome set up with the walking foot attached for applying quilt bindings. 

[For some reason, I find it awkward to get the walking foot in place, so when I'm in a spate of quilt making it stays put.]

My sewing machines had been for several years set up on opposite sides of the room. 

A few weeks before the 2021 onset of covid restrictions  I took my Janome to the local technician for cleaning and adjustment.  He stated that as many area women were bringing machines to be serviced,  I would be looking at a possible wait of several months before I could retrieve the machine; 

I dusted off my 20 year old Elna and quickly remembered what a smooth machine it is.

In my recent rearranging of the space I swapped out the tables, putting the Elna on the vintage desk I refinished years ago.

A small folding table alongside holds a cutting mat and whatever blocks I'm working on. [It is also a favorite spot for Robert-cat.]

The black cupboard only needed to be scooted a few yards along the floor from its previous spot under the east window. Even empty it didn't move easily!

Since this photo more arranging of the contents has been needed. 

After Thimble-kitten pulled down the open tray full of spools I purchased a plastic  lidded carrier especially designed to hold spools.

Matt and Gina are king and queen of yard sale goods. A decade ago Gina came home with an armload of decorator samples: large chunks of fabric in display books. She enthusiastically announced that 'we' could make a quilt from these. 

[Gina does not sew, thus 'we' had a royal connotation.] 

I removed the labels from the fabric, washed and pressed the pieces and filed them away in a plastic box. If you've worked with decorator cottons, you know that raveling edges are an annoying factor. Having carted the box of samples around through several house moves it seemed time to either get rid of them or think of a way to use them.  I sorted them by color groups--predominately shades of blue, yellow, pastels for this heavy quilt. I cut 8 inch squares and made 4-patch blocks of the remainders. There was enough fabric to place 8 inch squares around the body of the quilt and a heavy nubby beige left from summer bedspreads became the border.

Colorful is hardly the word!

Pinwheel blocks left from a long ago project, some half-square triangles; a few more were constructed  to create this Framed Pinwheel quilt on Jim's bed.

My color preference has long run to deep woodsy tones--I think of them as New England colors--so many leftover bits went into the sashing of this quilt.

I think this has a very structured 'masculine' appeal.

Finished just before the end of 2023, so not part of this summer's gathering.

Vintage Robyn Pandolph fabric from my stash and experimenting with a 'Flying Geese" tool.

This pattern has been called 'The Potato Chip' quilt. The strips are cut 2 1/2 inches [memories of the Eleanor Burns method!] and its meant to use up small remnants--which it did. The idea is for the strips to be random; I don't do random! My take became a variation of the Courthouse Steps block. An assortment of floral fabrics went into this with a pansy print for the border and a soft green butterfly print for backing and binding.

Two friends from church had recently lost both older sister and mother.

I created a large lap quilt for each of them as a love gift.

16 Patch blocks with sashing and cornerstones. 

This was my gift for the sister who been caregiver for their mother.

Time consuming but made use of small pieces of cheerful prints.

I take these 'everyday quilts' to a woman who does the quilting on an industrial Singer machine. 

She offers only the one graceful looping pattern, simple, affordable, sturdy.

I rummaged out a bag of strips cut in 1 3/4 inch widths, left from a quilt I was asked to make about 10 years ago. The blue border fabrics were purchased for a project that was interrupted by one of our moves. I named this quilt 'Summer Meadow.'

Log Cabin blocks are my favorite as they can be set in so many varying patterns.

This one features the very last strips of some fabrics I have loved. 

I named it 'Autumn Migration.' It is not sized for a queen bed, but it is a keeper.

 I took this one to a local long-arm machine quilter who has started working again after the death of her husband.

One quilt wasn't enough to deal with the decorator fabric samples. 

I constructed another slightly smaller, adding some scraps of my own leftovers from curtains and cushions. To piece out enough blocks I added four-patch units. 

The quilt is currently spread over my bed--it is sturdy enough to stand up to the cats.

This one, started during the winter of covid lock downs was meant to be a quilt-as-you-go project. Nothing extra to be purchased, no need to take the top to a machine quilter. I tried one of these projects previously and determined I wouldn't attempt such again.

Still--other people manage free-motion quilting--some do it beautifully and artistically. Surely I could manage something simple?

Perhaps if I had great patience and perseverance. I scrabbled away at 14 blocks, got discouraged and put the whole thing away.

I got it out last week, used wide painter's tape as guides to stitch a double X in the remaining blocks.

For a few moments I considered trying the free-motion thing again. Not! 

Its going together in a hybrid method--tediously and without the kind of precision that I usually achieve. I'm over it, but I'm going to give it a finish. It can serve as a utility blanket; I won't be troubled if the cats pick at it or stomp across it with muddy feet. 

Time to call it done and move on. 

I have several other projects started and ready to turn my attention to what I do well.

 

Did We Need A Kitten?

Amazon boxes with paper are the best!

"We don't need a kitten!"

Jim and I spoke almost in unison.

"Besides," I added reasonably, "We're old. A kitten might outlive us!"

Son Howard stopped by on his way home from a carpentry project, not an unusual happening on a Friday evening.  He was barely through the door when he launched into his discovery a few minutes earlier of an abandoned kitten. According to the disinterested remark by the proprietor of the convenience store at the corner of the main road, the kitten had been around for about a week, evidently dropped off by someone who didn't want it.

Our family is notoriously soft-hearted when it comes to needy dogs and cats.

Decidedly not feral, the kitten had run to Howard when he stepped out of his truck.

"Skin and bones! Dirty! Pitiful! How could anybody decent do that?"

A rhetorical query, of course.

Howard bought a tin of cat food, opened it and set it with the kitten in the shade, watched as the tiny creature gobbled the fishy-smelling pate.

After reiterating the tale of woe, Howard headed home, still muttering about the kind of people who could abandon a kitten to starve or be run over on the highway.

I tried to return to the article I was reading online. 

My thoughts instead dwelt on the homeless kitten and I felt a growing sense of guilt, even as I mentally reviewed the reasons why adopting another pet wasn't timely.

I don't suppose I was surprised when 10 minutes later Howard returned.

He had phoned home, he informed us, and been told that he couldn't leave a kitten to starve in the parking lot!

'You need to ride down with me to pick it up.'

I clambered into the truck with a feeling of resignation.

Que sera, sera.

Wheeling to a stop at the side of the store, Howard jumped out leaving the truck door open.

I sat, unmoving, watching, the three dogs in the back seat breathing heavily over my shoulder. 

The kitten ran, spindly-legged, to Howard; he scooped her up, reached across the console and dropped the tiny thing into my lap.

"I suppose Dad would be upset if you decide to keep it. I wouldn't want that."

The kitten, amber eyes huge in her bony face, crawled up my shirt, began a wheezy purr.

Jim turned from his desk when we barged through the door, the kitten clutched to my front.

I crossed wordlessly to the desk, held her out. 

He took her from me carefully, murmuring to her, sounds of shocked sympathy.

"She'll need to stay on the screened porch, away from the big cats, until she's been to the vet," I announced.

Leaving the kitten with Jim, giving Howard a thumbs up, I went off to collect a clean litter pan, a bowl of kibble, another one of fresh water.

We took turns visiting the kitten during the evening, watching her eat and drink until her sunken belly swelled.

Howard and Dawn rolled in the next afternoon bearing kitten supplies: a package of Purina's Pro Kitten Chow, 12 tins of wet food specially formulated for kittens.

The kitten, 'Thimble' was given a bath, tenderly wrapped in a towel and dried.

We marveled that she showed no signs of fear or wild struggle.

I wondered aloud if she could have been traveling with owners in a camper or motorhome, inadvertently lost when they might have stopped at the store for gas or supplies.

It would explain her easy way with humans.

We'll never know the back story.

Her condition, so thin and grubby suggested she had been on her own for too long.

Those first days, Thimble seemed all wide eyes, big ears, a purr that throbbed from her slight body.

I made two of the porch rockers cozy with fleece throws. Thimble often preferred the bare wooden rocker.

She had her first appointment at the vet clinic four days later. It was an expensive visit!

Ear mite treatment, de-wormer, topical application of a substance meant to banish fleas and nits.

Feline leukemia vaccination; a course of meds for respiratory issues.

Clean, eating well, Thimble moved into the house with the other cats.

She followed me everywhere, rummaged in the basket of music sheets, scaled my desk, flinging items onto the floor. She took to stalking the big cats, prancing sideways, smacking with a tiny paw.

Predictably, the established residents were indignant!

We make beds.

Draped on the back of the lodgepole rocking chair. 

This is a favorite place to nap, allowing for monitoring of the front door.

Newspaper saved for winter fire starting, is great for shredding.

A small vase of late-blooming flowers on the dining table invites being over turned creating a flood, preferably in the hours just past midnight.

Humans are a useful perch.

Growing is hard work, frequent naps are needed, preferably in the daytime.

Lights out is the signal for a rampage. 

Rosie, accustomed to curling up next to me for the night, is assaulted, leaps caterwalling from the bed, pursued by Thimble. Small items, a twig from the kindling basket, a pen on the desk, even a pod of okra tweaked from a bowl on the kitchen counter--anything that can be rolled, poked, skittered about is welcomed as a nocturnal plaything. 

After an hour of this one of us inevitably thumps out of bed, turns on lights, corners Thimble and escorts her to the screened porch. When we walk into the main room in the morning, there she is, paws tapping the window, pink mouth opening and shutting in beseeching meows.

On her better behaved evenings Thimble clears my bed of other cats, deposits herself on the book I'm reading. I'm a light sleeper at best and often wake to find that Thimble has cozied herself onto the pillow above my head, paws gently rearranging my braided hair.  At such times she purrs charmingly, subsides again into slumber, snoring lightly.

Thimble is the naughtiest kitten we can recall ever having. 

As she grows her body type is that of a Siamese, long, sinuous, tight-furred.

Her imagination, intelligence and interest are unbounded. 

She is constantly underfoot--hurtling down the staircase when I'm picking my way down with a basket of laundry. 

If I open the piano to practice, she crashes onto the keyboard. She is fascinated by the sewing machine, by my various sewing tools. 

We returned from church last week to find that Thimble had pulled a large tray of thread spools from the big open cupboard in my downstairs sewing area. Spools of all sizes rolled about, some unreeling yards of tangled thread. With 'help' from Thimble and Rosie I collected the spools and dumped them into a lidded plastic box. Today, following a trail of thread from the staircase, around the counter, behind the ironing board, I ran yet another spool to earth behind a covered bin which stores quilt backing fabric.

Thimble now weighs 5 pounds. 

She had her booster vaccination in September, after the blood test for feline leukemia read negative.

She is booked in for spaying on November 6. 

Did we need a Kitten?

Did we need a boisterous, rambunctious, rummaging kitten?

Did we need a kitten who clamors to be picked up, to be held and stroked? 

Perhaps we didn't, but Thimble needed us.

I tell her its a good thing we love her!

Perhaps--in the midst of life's perplexities and looming uncertainties--perhaps, we needed  a kitten!

Helping Jim with the screened porch renovation.

Off limits today as the screen and railings have come down.

 

Naming The Trees

It is largely due to my Grampa Mac that I can identify the most common trees--maple, oak, shag-bark hickory, white birch, beech. These were the species that grew in the woods and along the hedgerows in my native Vermont. When it comes to more specific recognition--white oak, red oak, sugar maple, soft/swamp maple--I falter.

I came to know individual trees; the towering ancient maples that stood either side of the gravel driveway at Grampa's farm next door, trees from which dangled swings made with stout rope and sturdy plank seats.

There were graceful elms bordering each side of the dirt road, elms that even in my childhood were doomed by Dutch Elm disease.  The lone elm standing in the middle of the east meadow drew the attention of both amateur and professional photographers and artists. It survived for decades, long after others had toppled.

I knew the stand of shag-bark hickory that crowned the little ridge across the brook, the old butternut tree below the spring.

Each autumn I walked the rutted track that ran through the woods beneath a canopy of flaming maple and mellow golden beech.

When Jim and I married we lived for a number of years at the farm his parents had owned.

The dooryard there was dominated by catalpas with their fragrant spring blossoms and later clusters of hanging seed pods. We cherished the twisted Wolf River apple trees in the pasture beyond the pond, tolerated the thorny locust whose slender twiggy branches scratched at the side of the house in a storm.

Many of those New England species and their close relatives have appeared like familiar friends in our adopted Kentucky landscape. Others such as the towering magnolia, the sweet gum and the venerable 

Old-Timey pear at our first Kentucky property were new acquaintances.

At our current [dare I hope, final?] homeplace wooded ravines slope along the north and south boundaries. Trees are crowded, stretching skyward for available sunlight. Hickory abounds, as does tulip poplar, sycamore with its textured seedballs, spindly dogwoods and redbuds that disappear into summer anonymity when their spring bloom has faded.

I have been intrigued by a handsome tree which I couldn't name; not a huge tree, but shapely and eye-catching, standing solitary near the head of the gravel lane that connects us to the blacktop road.

Walking to and from the mailbox I notice this tree from the first hint of new leaves, the full green of summer, and now the brilliant red-orange shimmer that will soon give way to a stark winter silhouette. 

More recently I've discovered others of the same type, though less well grown, tucked into the east boundary hedgerow.

Several days ago a retired forester posted photos in the local online gazette of a glowing sassafras he had spotted. Cautiously excited, I googled 'sassafras' and found more photos, descriptions.

Of particular interest is the fact that a sassafras tree wears three distinctive shapes of leaves: a slender oval, a thumbed 'mitten' shape, a three-lobed leaf. 

Carrying my old Canon camera I strolled along the east boundary fence, snapping photos of smaller sassafras trees, then up the lane to the regal example decked out in its autumn glory of red-gold.

Learning the identity of  trees, being able to recognize and name them, is likely a bit of knowledge to be stored away as only of use or interest to myself.

Visual landscapes change with time; trees are cut down or succumb to wind storms, brutal winters, insect infestations. 

Those two sturdy maples from which dangled the swings of my childhood are long gone, as are the fence line elms which gave my grandfather's farm its name, 'Elm Row Farm.' 

The hollow-trunked Old Timey Pear has been removed from the Gradyville pasture by a subsequent owner.

In this place and in this time I look each morning from my bedroom window to enjoy the now familiar view of the tallest hickory; in summer I can follow the zooming flights of resident hummingbirds from the feeders on the porch eaves to their favorite refuge in the tulip poplar or sycamore. I know where to watch for the first flush of exuberant pink on the spindly redbuds and the froth of white on the dogwoods.

And now, trudging up the lane in all seasons I can name the sassafras tree.

The sassafras tree near the head of the lane.

Sassafras along the east boundary fence.

Glow of sassafras leaves with backdrop of the neighbor's pond and pasture.

Varied shapes of sassafras leaves.

Three-lobed sassafras leaf in red; below in yellow-gold.

 Papery seed heads of tulip poplar against October blue sky.

The sky has darkened this afternoon, wind has stirred the trees, leaves have whirled to the ground.

This evening rain has fallen, the first in the entire month of October.

As we turn the calendar page to November and the wheel of the seasons edges toward winter, I'll walk beneath bare branches marveling at their tracery against the sky, waiting for the return of leaf and bud. 

 

Mid-October Light

During the weeks following the summer solstice, dwindling day length is scarcely noticeable. 

Mid-August I become aware that the sun is lurking somewhere at the edge of the north-east boundary before appearing around the barn to spread a pattern of morning light through the east windows. It is still summer, hot, humid, heat and light with us through the evening.

By September the turning of the earth, the lingering morning dew, the exhaustion of the garden, announce change that can't be ignored.

As we approach the mid-point of October the chilly mornings and evenings, the lowered path of the sun remind us that we will soon be on the cusp of winter. 

I canned tomatoes today, getting down to it at nearly noon. [Sadly, not tomatoes from our own garden harvest, but good ones that Matt acquired at one of the local produce auctions.]

Only about half of the two cartons were ready to process--7 qts--so the project will be ongoing this week.

Jim brought in an old folding table to set up in the sunroom; I covered it in newspaper and carefully spread the remaining tomatoes in rows to gently ripen.

It was a day of scudding clouds, mostly sunny, but with a cold wind.

Pegging cotton sheets on the back porch lines, the wind snapped and pulled, billowing the fabric above my head and chilling my fingers.

Tidying the kitchen after the tomato project I admired the slanting late afternoon light, quickly gathered in the now dry sheets, went back outside with my camera.

Light and shade along the north edge of the ravine.

Another view to north and west. 

The hickory trees are turning rusty gold, but the branches are bare of hickory nuts. 

There have been blooms on clematis 'Dr. Ruppell'--this one lacks the distinctive white stripes.

Jackmanii, badly in need of pruning, sports a few blossoms swinging in the wind.

The white clematis, nameless.

Seedheads of clematis Candida clinging to the old fence.

J. suggested we walk the meadow loop at dusk. The wind had dropped and the light was fading. The tang of woodsmoke from our chimney floated on the crisp air; the three-quarter moon was already riding the sky. Fallen leaves scuffed underfoot; beneath the hickories the nubs of last year's nuts still crunch beneath our shoes.

Self-sown zinnias still blooming in the wild tangle of the west garden.

The rescued white buddleia in its third summer. Will it survive another winter?

Nasturtiums are among the first flowers to feel the frost. 

These were late starters.

A tangle of nasturtiums, propped with sticks in the old pot by the greenhouse door.

October--autumn at its best--with the lingering reminders of summer--and the hint of winter to come.