Pressing Issues

I'm enjoying a bumper crop of hydrangea in the garden - this one is blooming for the first time in ages. When those orange day lilies open up at the same time the purple hydrangea get it going on, it is going to be spectacular.  Pictures in about 3 or 4 days, I think.

Well, I bombed out with the electricians but I made their day.  I'm glad somebody went home happy.  The fact of the matter is that with a window AC unit plugged in on a 20 AMP service, you cannot plug-in a Rowenta iron that sucks down 1700 jiggawats of power.  The guys did not believe that I "only" had an iron plugged in - they wanted to see what other ghost appliances I was using.   I took them upstairs to my sewing room and showed them the beast and the nice rack of clothes that were neatly ironed and waiting to be returned to the closet.  One of them said, "Wow - you iron?"  or maybe it was more like,  "WOW - YOU IRON!"  Either way, they were a little dumbstruck.   Apparently my iron is an energy hog.  Whatever - I love it. It's a "git 'er done" iron and I'm not going back to some sappy doofus girl-iron.  That's just how I roll.  I'll try to remember to unplug one when I want to plug-in the other. It isn't a monumental  pain, but that split second after I hit the "on" switch that powers up the iron and I think, "NNNNNnoooooooooooo" and realize all the sewing room and  bedroom clocks, vcr, etc. have to be reset.....again.... and I start exercising my vocabulary, if you know what I mean.

I shall console myself with the fact that it is only a problem 3 or 4 months out of the year and I can take the money I could spend on adding more power to the circuit box thingie and spend it on something important - like fabric, vodka, and lovely Eileen West cotton nightgowns.

Monday Design Wall

Today's projects have to be completely revamped - the electrician is on the way to make some changes in our service that would enable me to have an AC (window unit) running AND plug in my freakin' iron at the same time.  Novel idea, huh?  This house is 35 years old and appliances were not such energy hogs back then.

I'm not sure when he'll need to shut off the power but I'm going to have to find something I can do without irons or AC, not even a fan.  Since today's highs are in the mid 90's and the humidity is already about 83% I'm guessing it will be more of a challenge to stay sane than to come up with something to do during the blackout.  Looks like I'll be making more circles and embellishments for the Kitchen Saito project.  Esssh.  I hate summer heat....

The NASCAR of Quilting

The wait for the Bernina repair has begotten a  palooza-monster.  I've got enough cherries made for my wall hanging and I could stop - but I'm still in the zone.  By "in the zone" I mean I can whip a basting stitch around a 1 inch circle, yank it over a mylar template, pull the thread tight and cut the cord in record time.  Kind of  the equivalent of a NASCAR pit crew -  or maybe it's a rodeo calf roping thing - except I don't  pull the cord and jump up and throw my hands up in the air.  (Or yell, "Boogedy boogedy boogedy, let's go racing boys!")

Until I get the leaf pattern for Mrs. McGills Cherries drafted and cut, I wanted to keep going with this newfound talent.  I have some shades of solid purple  in my stash (for the day when I would appliqué a grapevine quilt I saw on Martha's Vineyard about 15 years ago) and that day has apparently arrived.  I'm now in the  purple-palooza zone.  My quilting Sherpa Debbie has schooled me on Mettler thread weights for appliqué and I have the background fabric all ready to go.

I'm feeling much less separation anxiety about the Bernina, too.

Addressing Change

Projects to keep-busy-while-the-Bernina-gets-a-rebuilt-motherboard-and-I-don't-want-to-think-about-whether-or-not-it-can-be-saved  continue apace. It's been better for me than I would ever have believed possible. All kinds of odds and ends are getting tied up, cut, tossed out and filed.  It's a good thing, and a little therapeutic.

One chore I'm still circling around is my address book changeover.  I've had the same one for over 20 years and it is pretty much impossible to navigate.  In that time span there have been so many changes, moves, cross-outs and (sadly) deaths that all  of the ensuing marking out and taping over  have rendered it pretty much illegible.  So why has it taken me so long to make the move to a new one?

Three years ago my husband and I were in Italy enjoying a belated return trip we promised each other would happen on our 5th anniversary.  (It was our 20th.) While I did not believe it possible, Italy was more spectacular the second time around.  I'd go back in a minute - hell  I'd move there in a minute.

My souvenir purchases have always been a little left of center - in Japan I bought fabric.  In Spain I bought Pepto Bismol. (Thank heavens for  an English pharmacy in  Gibraltar.)  On my honeymoon in Italy I bought beautiful gold earrings.  This time I bought an address book.  A Fabriano address book.  (I don't mess around.)  It has been sitting on my desk lo these three years and I have been unable to make the move.  At first  it was that intoxicating new-leather smell. The thick, buttery paper was too gorgeous to mess it up with ink.  It was just so clean,  so pure and so elegant.

When I made my first attempt to make the big changeover I ran smack into a brick wall.  As I started turning the pages of the old book I remembered relatives, places and events (dates of surgeries next to the physician contact information)  and all kinds of people who were no longer in my life.  The hardest page was the "M" page.  That is traditionally reserved for my immediate family.  The addresses have all changed, and some of those changes were not caused by "just" moving.  It is a snapshot of my immediate family before things took a hard turn. My brother was a pastor at a nice parish in Lincoln - months later he would be carjacked at gunpoint at a mission church in Venezuela.  He arrived home shaken, but  in time for my mother's diagnosis and rapid death from pancreatic cancer.  Mom at 69 left us shell-shocked and years later still dealing with the grief.  Dad has moved a couple of times since then, and due to  declining health issues  his address now is a nursing home.

I'm not ready to let go of that page.  My twin nieces were little girls growing up in Yellowstone Park, not going to prom and driving cars and getting in to hot water.  My god-daughter was in high school - not married and with a child of her own.  I had no idea that it would be so hard to let go of that single page of addresses. Maybe I'll make the new address book about everyone but my immediate family.  After all, I have their names and addresses tacked up by every phone in the house, and a copy in my date book. I'll keep that "M" page in a drawer somewhere and try not to look at it too often.  It represents a time in my life when I could fly home and just collapse on the couch at mom and dad's and just veg out and be a daughter and not have to make decisions about anything. I could call my sister at Christmas time and pretend to be Mrs. Santa so the twins would stop misbehaving and driving their mother nuts.

Things were not necessarily easier then, but they were definitely simpler.  Now, with this address book change, I really can't go home again.

Again with the Cinderella Thing

This weekend is the Vermont Quilt Festival in Essex Junction, Vermont.  I have always wanted to go to this show but it is just far enough from where I live that an overnight stay would be necessary.  Since I work on  Saturdays and Sundays it is just not possible to make the trip. Rats.  Ironically, the museum I work for has a table up at the event where they get to meet and greet show attendees  all day.  That might not be so much fun (it's actually pretty draining)  but the opportunity to pop in and out of the show would make up for a lot!

There are some wonderful special exhibits which (by themselves) would make the trip a good idea. Add to that the superb quality and  number of entered quilts, the merchant's mall, and the proximity to the Shelburne Museum in Burlington, Vermont, and you have yourself a five-star weekend. I encourage any and all of you who are in the vicinity to make the trip. You won't be disappointed.

Cinderella must stay home, mind the museum, and leave the fun to others.  I guess I am ok with that, but it does make me wonder where the hell my Fairy Godmother has been lately.....

A Funny Thing Happened At Cherrypalooza

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So I'm working along, thinking I'll use yo yo's for the flower parts of the block and the authentic cherry appliqué circles for the "buds" part of the block when a strange thing happened. I made about 180 little yo yo's and was pleased to find I had developed blistering speed and accuracy in my yo yo-age.  Nice.  Then came the time to grit my teeth and begin the appliqué circles again.  Started, and failed.  Got some helpful advice from my quilting sherpa Debbie ("Starch the HELL out of them) .... and it worked!  None of this namby pamby 'brush the sides with a little starch' thing. Oh no.  STHOOT.  And it works.   So I started back in.....and the strangest thing happened.  I developed some serious technique.  I like doing them. The AC is on in the family room, so when I'm home I hole up there and sit and whip these things out. Then I run upstairs and iron/starch them, let them cool, pull the mylar templates out of them, and run back downstairs to cooler climes and do another batch.  It  rocks.  I'm close to having enough cherries and yo yo's to do  a 4-block wall hanging (a big one at that) done! The pictures above show them in the initial freezer paper cutting process and the ironing/flipping them over process. I press both sides.  PRESS. Not iron.  And I leave the little thread tails on them, it's cute and I can give them an extra tug when I finally pin them down to appliqué them on to the background fabric.

Here is the rub.  I think I could make a million of these little cherry things. Honest. I know I didn't get enough Kona Chinese Red to  do an entire quilt top.  Dye lots are sketchy - I doubt I could match the fabric, and I bought the last 2 and a 1/4 yards on that bolt.  The bonus?  I have a new-found talent and that makes me very happy. I will never again feel intimidated by a technique that is new to me, knowing that it really IS just a matter of careful repetition. The minute it clicks and you start exhibiting such skill is just magic.

Design Wall Monday

As the Bernina is still not stateside, my hand sewing projects are continuing with this is a bit of reverse cathedral windows done with a layer cake of Holiday Flourish by Peggy Toole at Robert Kaufman Fabrics. This was my trip treat from a recent visit home that was also an epic road trip.  I found this in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin, where my sister lives.  I rarely (well, pretty much never) buy Christmas fabric but this collection was such a wowza I could not resist.  It seems a little decadent to use it for this particular block as most of the fabric gets chewed up in the process - but I don't care.  It's for Christmas and I'm willing to bend a little.

I'm still finishing the windows, but it is nice to take a break and rearrange them and see what a little gold star or silver snowflake looks like in the center. This will probably be a table runner or a mini-quilt for the table in the front hall.  It's also going to be reversible so I need to figure out what (if anything) to put on the 'plain' back side of things.

Oh yes - Cherrypalooza continues apace.  I'm still in love with that Kona Chinese Red fabric.

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A Father - Daughter Thing

I've been thinking about my Dad a lot lately; he turned 80 this past May and I can't believe he is that old.  Even when I go home and see him, it just doesn't seem like him.  He's been deeply changed by Parkinson's disease; his macular degeneration has pretty much robbed him of his sight and simple speech is difficult for him.

I am one of those textbook daughters who grew up thinking her dad could do anything. ANYTHING.  One of my life's earliest memories was waking up in my bed and finding my pillow was missing.  (Even at a very young age, I valued  sleep above my life.)  I looked all over the bed, made sure my sister didn't have it, looked under the bed, etc. and by then had worked up some pretty tragic angst.  I was so upset that I padded in to my parent's bedroom and woke up......my dad.  (I knew early on not to mess with my mother.)  I woke him up and told him my sorrows. He got up, took me back to bed, and managed to find my pillow wedged between the mattress, the headboard and the wall.  I thought he was a genius.

Shortly after that I remember Dad coming home from work and being greeted by the mayhem of 6 kids and a tired wife.  (If I came home to that every night I think I would shoot myself.)  Dad tended to roll with it. As a father in the days when the 'bonding' thing wasn't so much, he didn't feel too obligated to share every second of our lives.  He did do one thing that still makes my head explode when I think about it.  He would pick me up around the waist, lift me up,  bump my head on the ceiling and whisker me.  Dad had a serious 5 o'clock shadow and he'd rub his cheek on mine until I would scream with laughter.  Just sitting here writing about it makes me giggle and weepy, all at the same time.

I loved watching my Dad do things around the house. I helped him (well, I held and fetched the tools) when he was making a new bedroom in the basement. I knew about hanging drywall and taping seams and the different kinds of hammers before I was out of the 5th grade.  Even in college I'd haul home the odd broken thing that needed some fixing - and he always managed to fix it up like new.  I have my own set of paintbrushes, cutting brushes and tools that I hide from my husband. My tools are  cleaned when I am done with them.  Guess who taught me that?

One of the biggest father-daughters moments happens in the back of the church before any dad walks his daughter down the aisle.  Mine was steady as a rock, but I was 30 years old -  certainly no child bride.  My brother (a priest) claims I was the calmest bride he has ever seen.  So it was a little weird when Dad turned to me and said, "Are you sure about this?"  I thought he was joking.  And he was.  Kind of.  I said, "Yeah, this is the right guy and I want to do this."  There was a pause, and then he said, "Well, I just want you to be sure. Because if you have any doubt we can go right back home and it won't be any big deal."    And he meant it.  And I loved him for loving me so much.

There is a strange and wonderful thing that happens now when I go home to see my Dad.  I am  so deeply grateful he still recognizes his children because that moment when I walk in to his room and see him I feel like that 9-year-old girl in the picture.  He looks at me like I am still the nine-year-old girl in the picture  and he wraps his arms around me and hugs me as hard as he can.  For those few seconds he is my Daddy, and I am his Joannie Kay.  It feels blissful. It is that most priceless gift of a parent's love for a child and a daughter's ardent love of her father.

Happy Father's Day, Daddy.    I won't be able to see you tomorrow, but I'll probably spend some time watching the Weather Channel -  because I know that far away, you'll be watching it too.

Design Wall Monday - Sort Of

When I'm surfing quilt blogs, I have noticed many of them feature a "Design Wall Monday" thingie. I've always thought that was an interesting way to start the week - taking a look at what you are currently working on, exploring options, etc.  Then I went in to my sewing room and looked at my design wall and realized that while mine is not the conventional quilter's design wall, it serves the same purpose.

There are all kinds of things on my design wall.  I have blocks I've attempted, first shots at paper piecing, some old blocks that I just love to look at, pictures, mementos and all kinds of things that inspire me, make me think about color, and make me laugh.  There is a picture of my mother on there, one my DAD printed out and sent to me when I brought home her Bernina.  At the bottom, he typed up this little note that says, "NO JO, I TOLD YOU TO BACK STITCH IT ON THE BACK OF THE MATERIAL FIRST!!!!!  JEEZ, DO I HAVE TO SHOW YOU EVERYTHING???????"  How amazing is that.  This man knew his wife,  he knew me, and he knew exactly what she would say to me.

My design wall is wonderful composite of things and people I love.  Having Mom up there keeps me on track, she channels her thoughts about what I am making. (We disagree a lot, but that is par for Mom.  She still thinks my 12th grade Dorothy Hamill haircut is the one I should be wearing today.  She also thinks I should wear lipstick. )   Dad is up there too - on the lower portion there is a picture of him when he opened the store in Nebraska sometime around 1969 or 1970.  He's so young - and so handsome. And so smart.  It is thee most inspiring design wall ever.

PS - Father's Day is this Sunday - tell your Dad (wherever he is) how much you love him.

Yo to the Yoyo - Yo to BP

Cherrypalooza is rapidly becoming yoyopalooza.  However, I have an interesting twist that might satisfy Grace AND enable me to retain my sanity,  so I got that goin' for me, which is nice.  The Bernina is still on its way to the motherboard repair shop, but I received a lovely postcard today:

This is a link worth checking out:  If It Was My Home shows you just how enormous the oil spill is by superimposing it on a map of where you live.  Like I needed something else to keep me awake at night - this oil spill is going to have such long-lasting and far reaching effects it makes my head explode.  And not in the good way.

EDIT: For some reason,  I have the uncanny ability to find typos and weejits AFTER I publish my blog update.  What is that all about?

Going in Circles

Cherrypalooza has begun in earnest. I'm not smart enough to hide my scissors during hormonal surges (guess who cut her own hair today....) but I am smart enough to figure out that if each of these blocks needs 52 cherries  I sure as hell better figure out a way to make that many without completely losing my mind.

So far, it's a draw.  I have a 0ne and 1/2  inch hole puncher thingie, so I'm punching out perfect circles from freezer paper. I then ironed those on to the fabric,   experimenting with cutting out different sizes of seam allowance.  Then I put the heat-resistant mylar circle (cut with the same punch!) in the middle of the fabric circle, dabbed a little starch around the edges and ironed them over the rounded edge. Meh.   A little wonky, with occasional points where it did not fold over so nice.

Second attempt - I took the red circles and ran a quick basting stitch around the seam allowance.  I placed the mylar circle in the center and pulled on the thread to gather the fabric around the edges of the mylar circle.  Semi-meh - a better appearance, but not that lovely, round, perfect red circle I'm looking for.   I read up on a few other methods  (using interfacing, flipping them inside out,  wet toothpick, etc.) but nothing really jumped out as the answer.

Then it dawned on me.  Grace probably had a quarter and a pencil.  She put the quarter on the fabric, traced around it, cut it out with a little turn-over-the-edge fabric to spare and JUST HAND SEWED THE DAMN THINGS IN PLACE.  That is why this quilt is so spectacular.  It was done the old-fashioned way.  I'm always looking for the quicker, easier, better way.  Sometimes, there just isn't one.  This is not to say I'm giving up on my freezer paper and basting stitch. I figure by the time I make a couple of hundred I'll have it down pat, right?  If my brain snaps, I'll  go to plan B and just make little yoyo's and do it with them.

Pedicure Shame FAIL

Okay,  I know it is June 7th and everyone on the planet has had a nice summer  pedicure for at least a month, but my life is complicated and nail places are generally closed on Mondays.  I bite my nails like a psycho so I only need to get my feet done - and only for the summer months.  Why pay good money to have your toenails painted and then stick them in  wool socks?  You tell me.

Today I decided to run some errands and found an open nail salon. They take walk-ins, and seconds after walking in the door ( and picking my usual way-too-pale polish color) I was in the comfy chair soaking my feet.  (I was glad that I had buffed the feet down a little before taking a shower this morning, it would have been much worse.)  I wish I had brought something to read; there was little there to choose from but MODERN BRIDE (shoot me) or other vapid chick magazines.

The nail technicians start chattering in their native language -  I was an English major, not a linguistic specialist, so I can't tell you which language -  something Cambodian-esque,  maybe Vietnamese.  I always get uncomfortable because I think they are talking about me.  (The  Seinfeld show did a memorable episode on this very phenomenon.) Everyone thinks they are talking about them, right?  Well, I chastised myself for being so self-involved. They were probably talking about where they were going after work, right?

Wrong.  The lovely young woman working on my feet turned to her co-worker and said, "unintelligible, unintelligibleunintelligibleunintelligible HOME DEPOT unintelligible unintelligibleunintelligible."     The co-worker burst out laughing.   Want my translation?  "Hey, this woman has callouses like concrete. She need to go to HOME DEPOT and get a belt sander for these feet!"

Well, sooooorrrry.  I rejoice in being past the age where I have  to care that much about what my damn feet look like.  I wear it as a badge of honor that I no longer read "womens" magazines, wear shoes with heels that ruin my feet, or care about what purse is in what season.  I buy what I like, I wear what I want, and frequently run errands without makeup. OOohhh rogue!   Oh, please.

This is the most liberating phase of my life. I'm not really sure why or how we all start out innocent and by  8th grade we can't leave the house because we are sooooooo ugly.  If  I was this self-aware in my 20's I'd be running BP and that damn oil well would have been capped 20 minutes after it blew up.  Then I would treat myself to a coffee coolata.   Suck on that, fashionistas.

PS - that is not a picture of my foot, but I wish it was. I'd love to be able to flip people off with my toes.

With the Help of Amazing Grace

Grace Snyder is my quilting idol. I am unabashedly a groupie.  I even have some of the Salem China company dishes that inspired the Flower Basket Petit  Point quilt - the holy grail of quilts.  Seriously.  There is plenty about her on the internet, but if you want to get the real story you must read No Time On My Hands.    Even if you aren't in to history, the story of this woman's life and what she accomplished is inspiring and amazing.

I've had the book Nebraska Quilts and Quiltmakers for many years and have always enjoyed looking at Grace's quilts in that book.  The one that really GETS me is Mrs. McGill's Cherries.  It's gorgeous, it's timeless, and my Mom's maiden name was McGill - so, total sign from God, right?  As if.

Yesterday I skated out of work to get to the Fabric Corner in Arlington, Massachusetts.   Yes, it is a schlep from Lowell.  Yes, they were having a sale, and my quilting sherpa Debbie raves about the place.  So I checked it out - and it was terrific.  I got there about 1/2 hour before closing time, but managed to scope out the place and establish it in my head as a "definitely go back to" resource.  I also ran smack dab into a bolt of Kona cotton CHINESE RED.   "Oh heavens," I thought, "these would make the most beautiful cherries....."  About $14 later, I left the store with the red (and a nice sold green) and decided to take a whack at my own cherry tree. I'm not sure if it will end as a single block (probably) or a wall hanging, but as long as the Bernina is out of commission, I need some focused hand sewing and this might just be IT.  Wish me luck - I'll need it.

Payback is a You-Know-What

I have today off. WOO HOO. (I'm working Saturday and Sunday  so don't get any 3-day weekend fantasies in your head.)  I dragged a load of my laundry to the laundry room and commenced a get-it-up-on-the-clothesline race against time.  (Afternoon sea breezes undo all that sunlit drying.)

About 11 am, the phone rang - it was my genius husband  informing me that a friend of ours was coming over for a home cooked dinner.  Whatever.  It's my night to cook, and that isn't a problem. I can cook for hordes without breaking a sweat.   What IS a problem is the house has been a little, er, neglected lately and things were pretty dusty. And messy.  And - you get the idea.  I have, in vain, tried to explain to my husband that when people come over and see a mess, they don't leave and say, "Hey, that Joe needs to get some housework done!"  No, it's always the wife that takes the hit for any untidiness.

One thing led to another, and I have spent the last three hours cleaning, moving plants outside, dusting, vacuuming, ironing tablecloths (long story) and now I am HOT AND TIRED.  Bonus - I'm not finished.  The house looks good, but I haven't spent this long looking at things in a while.  Let's just say I've made some executive decisions.

On my next day off, I am calling Goodwill.  I am telling them to bring the BIG truck.  My husband will learn that he should never give me an opportunity to asses the clutter in this house again.  (Fair disclosure - it's mostly his crap. Honest.  It includes some of his mother's furniture that needs to go away. Forever.)

It's payback, baby.  After 22 years, you would think he would know better than to mess with me.

Shut My Mouth Wide Open!

So I'm at work today, dealing with the auditors going up my colon looking for toxic  bookkeeping practices from the last fiscal year, dealing with the "will you print" requests from co-workers (I have mad computer printing skills & have tamed the mega-copier to be my bitch), along with   various and assorted other stuff that happens at a chronically understaffed institution.  I had just called Eddie, my Bernina dude, and given him the green flag to send my Bernina motherboard to the hinterlands to be rebuilt and was feeling a little down and out, to tell the truth.

Then it happened.

Brianna, our wonderful curatorial intern, came flying down to the main floor of the museum offices and said (and I quote), " I am not f-ing with you, come upstairs NOW."   I had no idea what was up but I knew she meant business. I skated upstairs to the workroom where Brianna and Laura were doing incoming condition reports on some broderie perse quilts for our next exhibit. Spread out on the table was a lovely, contemporary broderie perse quilt  (that just means it was done recently, as opposed to being an antique) that stopped me cold.

IT HAD MY FABRIC.

My fabric that I found in my stash clean-out that I talked about in No More Faux Bro. The exact same fabric! I nearly fell over, giggling and squealing and gobsmacked by the coincidence. Brianna was there when I brought in my fabric earlier that week, and had seen my plans for attempting a broderie perse wall hanging.  She was so tickled to see it on the exhibit quilt, and told me that it was made by a quilter in (I think) Washington state.  I'll get pictures if I can get her permission, and show you what she did with the fabric.  Amazing!  It was made circa 1994, so that is a good way of dating my "found" fabric!

I love how the universe just balances out sometimes.  I was completely underwater with the demands of the day - and then that quilt showed up.  I'm taking it as a sign to press on with the hand applique embroidery and see what happens. Until then, bon voyage, Bernina - you are  off  to heaven only knows where  to the mother ship repair shop.  Don't forget to write.....

Bernina Blues

Gloom, despair and agony. The Bernina 1090 is in the shop getting a cleanup, and the Bernina dude called my house today to leave a message.

That is never good.

It was too soon for it to be ready to be picked up, so I knew there were problems. I played back the message and heard that problem one was a switch that would cost about $29 to replace.  No problem!  The second - the motherboard was a little toasted, unable to regulate stitch length....ever again.   I was a little relieved, because I thought it was me monkeying around with my machine and unable to reset it properly.  Then the relief passed, and the realization that it is a failing motherboard set in.  He wants to take it out - send it to BERNINA - and have it rebuilt.

CRAP.   CRAPCRAPCRAP.

If it took me 5 weeks to get a freakin' needle clamp screw, how long is it going to take to get a motherboard rebuilt?  It's going to run me about $200 (ouch) and I haven't found out if he'll warranty the work.   I am honked.  I have a quilt to finish that is about ONE YEAR overdue.  I've got 2 projects spread out on the guest bed and I want them DONE AND MOVED.

The Bernina was my mother's machine, and I have such a sentimental attachment to it - I'd never let it go.  I even hauled the little dealie my dad built for it all the way from Nebraska to Massachusetts. It has their karma all over it - it has Mom's love of quilting  embedded inside the machine, and my dad's love of my mother infused in  the custom-built sewing desk/table.

I just want it to WORK.  Nothing fancy, just SEW.  HERE.   NOW.

I am going outside to cut some herbaceous peonies and then come in and open a bottle of wine.

CRAP.

No Faux Bro!

That is the name of my next project.  Since the Bernina is off getting it's 10 thousand mile checkup,  I needed some hand sewing to keep me occupied.  Additionally, since we're all aflutter with the beautiful broderie perse quilts coming in to the museum for the next exhibit,  I thought it might be interesting to try one myself.  The true sign-from-God came when I found this piece of fabric during my Schooled by my Stash  excavation.  It isn't as O R A N G E as it looks  -   for some reason my camera takes poetic license with color.  Anyway, I'm nervous as heck cutting it up, but as my  Yoda & Sherpa quilting guide Debbie explained to me, "Well, you can just sew it back together, you know...."

So I'm cutting it up in to bits and trying to arrange it so that it will look like a beautiful little tree coming out of an elegant pot.  The background color is a burnt orange nubby lovely, but now I'm thinking I might put it on a cream muslin background and use the burnt orange for pieced borders. This,  my very first attempt at broderie perse, will be a wall hanging when it grows up. Since I am  not going to fuse it or use machine applique, it will truly be a "no faux bro" project.  I figure by the end of it I'll either love or hate needle turned applique.  Either way,  it is one quilt I'll get to take of my bucket list.

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