Team Autumn, Handmade Wiggles, and Drawing Outside the Lines

…being a dipping of the toe into machine quilting in the negative space, with promising results, but a full-on belly-flop into the limpid pool of nostalgia.

In the halcyon days of yore, after college, and after the diaspora of many friends out of state but before everyone was gone, and before kids, and usually between September and November, there was Team Autumn.

Ringleader Bean totes a mighty harvest from The Orchard.

Her minions are not so successful in the hunt.  Astrid, Chadly, and Señor "The Legend of Sleepy" Fitzgerald. 

This quartet of intrepid autumneers claimed the season for our very own

Thrifty Sparta Sugar Shock: A Self-Diagnosis

…being a re-discovery of an old friend, with unexpectedly sweet results.

Summer has been a bit of a lull - well, okay, a torpor.  I'm doing some sewing, but not finishing much.  As anyone who's ever been in my company for more than 3 minutes knows, I HATE to be hot, and my motivation to do anything drops drastically when the temps go up.  I prefer to sit in the bathtub with a cold Mexican Coke, panting until September.

But I made a discovery the other day that was cool, so I figured I'd share.  This is a crappy, beat to hell quilt that I bought for $5 from what I recall as an ice cream store, in Sparta, Wisconsin, while taking a lunch break from acting as a massage therapist on the Minnesota to Chicago AIDS Ride in 1997:

Sorry the pictures are so dark.

I had only wanted it, really, because we needed something to keep the sun off of our clients in the (incredibly hot, smelly) tent we were working in. But of course because it was an AIDS ride, and the AIDS quilt project was making its way around the U.S. on a pretty much continual loop by then, many of my clients naturally made this association and it triggered them to talk openly and emotionally about their friends, families, and lovers who had battled or lost their battles with HIV and AIDS.  That was probably one of the most conversation-provoking sun shades I've ever used.  I've always kind of loved this thing since then, even though it really is in horrible condition.

Binding the Fractured Flower

…that's not a euphemism.  It's the completion of Lulu's birthday quilt.


Not much to say on this one, just a few final photos of the completed quilt I was calling "Apophenia", but which pattern is really called Fractured Flowers - as I'd previously decided, I bound it up in orange stripes with a hint of green, for the most part…..though naturally, I ran out of it after making an error, and in my attempt to finish the whole quilt on time, I used a little scrappy bit of other orange fabric, which tone I ended up liking better for being a little orange-er and warmer.  That's okay, though: I still like the stripy fabric as well.  Binge-watching for this binding was seasons 1 & 2 of "Grimm."  How I love to bind a quilt and half-pay attention to bad television featuring pretty men.  I am a middle-aged cliche.

A few more photos….the first is the whole completed top with binding still in progress on the upper and upper right-hand sides (you can see the little binding clippy things I've been using instead of pins, which I dearly love:)

And here is a slightly better view of the quilting,