Dusting off the blog

That was an unplanned hiatus.  I spent the summer lost in a combination of grief and inertia.
I lost my dad in early June.  May had been a nightmare month as his health plummeted, with trips to the ER and tests and more tests.   He'd been fighting a long battle against a degenerative muscle disease and it finally won. 
I can't say enough good things about hospice - I literally don't know how we could have gotten through it without them.  So much help and comfort at a time when we really needed it.  Letting go was so hard, and they held our hands through it all.
Getting back into any kind of creative groove took a long time, and it's taken even longer to get to the point where I feel like talking again.
So, here I am, talking again.  Hello.

One thing I did do is get the quilting done on my granddaughter's Storm at Sea quilt, which I've been calling Sea of Tranquility.

(She's holding the other end of the quilt, but I cropped her out of the picture since I didn't ask her for permission to show her face.)
As you can see, I went ahead with my crazy plan to quilt it in a big spiral.  The beginning was a certified pain in the butt, but it was just the kind of simple mindless process that my frazzled self needed.  And I love the effect it gives of ripples moving out from the center, echoing the light to dark transition that I'd worked in the values of the blues and greens.

Big project, big quilt, done.  One positive to put up against the negative.
We just keep going.

A Tale of Two Finishes

That's right - I finished TWO quilts this month.  That's a new personal best - I typically don't finish two quilts in a YEAR!
Y'all knew I was pushing to finish On Ringo Lake - last year's Bonnie Hunter mystery quilt, but I had another quilt in motion, too.  I had to wait to brag on tell you about it until after it had been presented.

Long Time Gone!

I had wanted to give it to my youngest daughter (the one who convinced me how wonderful a color orange is) for Christmas, but I just couldn't wait.  Nothing wrong with an early gift, right?
(And now as I look at that quilt, I have a crazy yen to make another one.  Such a lot of fun!)

We had planned to take photos this afternoon, before she headed out for home, but we hadn't planned on the rain.  So here we are squeezed up on the porch (my other daughter is hiding behind the quilt) trying to get a pic or two without getting wet.

Here's On Ringo Lake being unfurled -

and here it is all bound, sealed and delivered.

The last stitch of the binding went in this morning so I could give it to my stepmom for her birthday.

Two finishes means I can start four new quilts, right?

One will be started tomorrow for sure.  Easy peasy four-patches for Good Fortune are on the agenda.
Now what three other projects can I choose?


Since these quilts are both scrappy magic, I'm linking with Cynthia at Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap!  Come see all the scrappy fun!

Holy crap! I finished something!

Yes, even I can manage a finish now and then.  Well, mostly then.  But for once, now!
Yeehaw!

Usually when I'm hit by a squirrel, I want to start something new.  In this case, the squirrel wanted me to grab an old project and see it through.
Remember this  project?  I had a sudden urge to quilt it (but not to photograph the quilting process), which I proceeded to do yesterday and today.
 

And I even tried out a different kind of binding that I'd been wanting to play with. 

I made a flanged binding, using the yellow/orange dots as a constant fabric for the flange, and a variety of orange prints for the main binding fabric.  (There are lots of tutorials available for this binding.  Here's one now.)  Since this was for a relatively flat table runner, I made my strips narrower - the yellow was 1.5" and the oranges were 1.25".  It worked perfectly!

Normally when I get ready to sew a binding on, I compulsively measure it and remeasure it to make sure it's long enough.  This time I decided to just let it be a surprise.

Phew!  It was a happy surprise!  Plenty left over.

You can sort of see the quilting here -

I used green thread and straight lines in the background, spacing them randomly 1/4" to 1" apart, then free-motioned curved "pumpkin ribs" in orange thread on the pumpkins themselves.

And here's my finished Pumpkin Patch.

 Complete with the required toes...

Gotta go mark it on the calendar, now: "Feb 28, 2017 - actually finished something!"