Month: July 2024

The “Happy” Quilt is DONE

And I have this tremendous sense of relief as a result, as if a boulder I’ve been carrying has been off-loaded.

“Happy” is the “36-Ring Circus” designed by Joanne Lewis. The pattern and template kit are at the Paper Pieces web site. Enough said with that information: I’m done whining.

I started this English Paper Piecing project in June of 2018. That’s SIX YEARS for heaven’s sake. There are SO MANY tiny pieces, and I spent COUNTLESS hours prepping all the templates. Plus, sewing all the curves was so, so hard. Most had to be done with a flat-back stitch, which is hard to do in an unwieldy big quilt. I used up a whole roll of artist tape along the way to get the curves to stay put properly while I sewed each block together and each row into the quilt.

The block centers are all fussy cut Cotton+Steel/Ruby Star Society. The rings are solid pastels, and the ring centers and the 4-patches between the rings are all dark solids. The outer border of dark fabrics squares this quilt off nicely.

Plus, this past year I decided to HAND QUILT it using lots of colors–dark colors in the dark fabrics and light colors in the light colors–and I’m actually not sorry about that decision as it has provided many hours in the last six or so months of contemplative stitching, though some of this work was also hard as when I made this quilt I didn’t trim back seams to a short 1/4-inch and that made the hand quilting near seam edges hard enough that I had to wander stitching lines away from them.

BUT, SHE IS DONE and has been washed and dried. Of course I washed her as her parts and her completed size have been dragged around of six years. Now she is no longer called “the quilt from hell.” Now she is called…DONE.

Here’s a close up of a border corner. The curve on the left binding is a camera distortion. The quilt is square.

The back is nicely textured, and I like the warmth of the ruby color.

Most of all, the task I set myself to make a hand-made quilt for each of my 7 grandchildren is now also complete. “Happy” is ALL made by hand except for sewing the binding on one side with my sewing machine–the other side is hand sewn. I always hand sew my bindings on the loose side.

DONE is a very nice word right now. I’m “Happy.”

A Katydid

I saw an insect I didn’t know the other day on the red roses.

It was about 1/2 to 3/4- inch long, the color of a green apple, and had the longest front antennas I’ve ever seen. The antennas had to be over an inch long, seemed to be iridescent, and had tiny alternating bars of darker/lighter colors.

It didn’t take long to figure out what it was: a katydid, also known as a “bush cricket” in some places. It’s kin to grasshoppers too. It’s a jumper, with big hind legs. Yes, she/he jumped immediately when it saw me looking. And it did look like “a walking green leaf”–the description I found along the identification way.

Katydids are not worrisome pests in a garden as they only eat a tiny part of upper leaves on shrubs and trees. They are prey for a lot of other insects and birds. There are many types of katydids across the world, some do eat other insects and some can be much bigger. But the one I saw is common in tropical/warm climates like the southern United States.

Here’s an image I found:

I mentioned seeing a katydid in my roses to a neighbor, and he laughed and said, “What! You’ve never seen one? We used to try to catch them.”

If I had seen one as a child at my grandparents’ house in Georgia–and there was a big garden–I have no memory of it. Hummingbirds, yes, but not katydids.

The night-time calls from Katydids are VERY loud apparently–and their calls are very distinctive. They make the call by rubbing their wings together. (There is a link below where you can hear them–and I’m now wondering if part of what we have all been calling “frogs” is at least partly Katydids.

Here’s more info:

https://biokids.umich.edu/critters/Tettigoniidae/

For sound:

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=katydid+sound&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:803dcd02,vid:cxIzRw1BToI,st:0

AND, note there are LOTS of poems that include katydids, which you can find on poetrysoup.com

https://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/a_summer_afternoon_18901#google_vignette

A Summer Afternoon

by James Whitcomb Riley

 A languid atmosphere, a lazy breeze,
With labored respiration, moves the wheat
From distant reaches, till the golden seas
Break in crisp whispers at my feet.


My book, neglected of an idle mind,
Hides for a moment from the eyes of men;
Or lightly opened by a critic wind,
Affrightedly reviews itself again.


Off through the haze that dances in the shine
The warm sun showers in the open glade,
The forest lies, a silhouette design
Dimmed through and through with shade.


A dreamy day; and tranquilly I lie
At anchor from all storms of mental strain;
With absent vision, gazing at the sky,
"Like one that hears it rain.
"

The Katydid, so boisterous last night,
Clinging, inverted, in uneasy poise,
Beneath a wheat-blade, has forgotten quite
If "Katy DID or DIDN'T" make a noise.


The twitter, sometimes, of a wayward bird
That checks the song abruptly at the sound,
And mildly, chiding echoes that have stirred,
Sink into silence, all the more profound.


And drowsily I hear the plaintive strain
Of some poor dove .
 .
 .
 Why, I can scarcely keep
My heavy eyelids--there it is again--
"Coo-coo!"--I mustn't--"Coo-coo!"--fall asleep!

Two “A Piece of My Heart” Quilt Tops

I finished the second “A Piece of My Heart” quilt top yesterday, and will measure it and organize a backing/binding today maybe.

Here are the two tops–made with the 3 1/2-inch squares of Cotton+Steel/Ruby Star Society fabrics I cut up about 5 years ago. I have lost count of all the quilts made from that fabric stash. It is probably nearing 20, if not a bit more. That might make a fun blog post one of these days.

And:

The neutral top is quilted now–with a heart pantograph that created lovely texture. This top is now trimmed and binding made. Note: Bonnie Hunter some time back said she trims with a SMALL square ruler. I’ve been trying that–using a 9.5 square–and that is really working well–much better than the big 24-inch square and a long ruler. I have much more control.

Aren’t these pretty flowers from my garden?

My two gardenia plants are NOT thriving. Their leaves turn yellow, drop off, and they grow new ones. Research says they need specific nutrients and to try a mixture that uses fish parts. I ordered some–and mixed it up and put it on them. We’ll see. The soil here (whine, whine) is mostly clay–it will take time and amendments to help it.

It has been cooler here this summer than last, but it will get hotter now likely. La Niña (cooler and dryer than her boyfriend El Niño) is shifting into place. Also the water vapor spewed into the atmosphere from a huge underwater volcano (Hunga-Tonga) a few years back is now dissipating. Water vapor is way, way more important to heat retention in the atmosphere than CO2 and is much, much more than CO2.

Anyway, I’ve really been enjoying my walks after 7 pm and can do a mile in short order. We have a frequent “sea breeze” here that is just delightful, and it appears in the evenings frequently.