What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

After a long break, this string Hatchet quilt is finished. I didn't want straight lines on this quilt nor a motif in the central squares. Eventually I chose quarter circle expanding ripples. Straight lines or even free-motion quilting would have been much easier. 

Many thanks to Patty and Gayle who donated green fabrics when I ran low. What ...

I wanted a perfect ending. 

Now I've learned, the hard way, 

that some poems don't rhyme, 

and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end.

Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking a moment 

and making the most of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.

~Gilda Radner

This top has taken a long time... partly {or mostly} because I've been gone so frequently this summer. However, it's finally done... perhaps. I think I'd like a border of random green scraps and a second border of lights ...

The constant happiness is curiosity

~Alice Munro

Straight lines with the walking foot are one of my go-to quilting designs. They are relaxing, quick, and easy. There is something meditative about repeatedly halving the distance between previous lines. It makes a good time to think.

I moved the darkest set of hatchets to the center and divided the swans and goldenrod into two rows each.

 

When some friends and I made a trip to Berkeley for Freddy Moran's Face the Year exhibit, we stopped by Stonemountain where I  purchased the back for a "future ...

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, 

and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

~Marilyn Monroe

It felt good to clear out some of the older yellows and greens. Now another baby quilt will be needed and the blues could use a combing through. Except for the clear blue with swans, these are all soft blues with a grey undertone. The swan fabric is also light blue although much more clear but the swans and their white shape relate to the cranes on the left and the white leaves on the right. Plus, they fill out ...

Life does not have to be perfect to be wonderful.

~Unknown

All the blocks were made and trimmed traditionally but there was no plan for the layout. As last week's post showed, I worked through all the variations I could think of... and ended with this well-regulated arrangement. The value changes were just too great between the yellows and greens otherwise.

The quilting is my usual/common organic lines with a walking foot. I start by SID the main seams, then come back and halve that distance. And then the halving is repeated until the distance looks good ...

There is a strong strain of individualism and risk-taking in Texas. We'll do what we want to now and worry about the future later. 

This is a case in which the future blew in and hit the whole state.

H.W. Brands, historian at UT Austin

Personally I made it through the winter storm in Houston with no broken pipes but turned off the water all week. And I have lots of quilts. ;-) There were so many on the bed to stay warm, I couldn't move once I got in. By Sunday many were wearing shorts.  

It shouldn ...

Every test in our life makes us bitter or better, every problem comes to break us or make us. The choice is our whether we become a victim or victor.

~Lorenzo Dozier