January/ Quietude

qui·e·tude

noun a state of stillness, calmness, and quiet in a person or place.

Good evening! It's mid-January, the quiet depths of winter are settling around us here at the beach. I'm  surprised reading your blog posts and comments how many of us enjoy the slow quiet months of winter. 

It took me til now to finally eradicate holiday items in my house. Last to get cupboarded were my mercury glass jars and bottles. The house is softly blue again, with wintery touches of brown and black.

Please forgive the bath towels on the sofas! It was a rainy day and Mo adores a muddy winter garden plot or wet nasty puddle, in his best doggy fashion. Then I took the pics, not even seeing, oh well.

Not much new here: the blue seashell toile cushions. Someone asked me if they button on and off, and yes they do, making it easy to switch to the reds or cheddars. The larger pillow covers have envelope closings and can easily be switched too.

Here I'm auditioning a lovely blue and grey ikat inen for future pillows. The ticking will be the backs.

This lovely quilt, by Denise Davis, anchoring the grey farmhouse stripe runner and my turquoise metal tin. 

I filled the tin with extra large pine cones and seashells, a found under the sofa sprig of pine---a winter-y mix but not Christmassy. 

I love how the turquoise container picks up the similar subtle duck egg blue in the quilt.

On the big chair a knitted Fair Isle sweater pillow with the quilt remnant Coxscomb pillow behind it.

A not often used but beautiful blue polka dots Star of Bethlehem quilt over the arm.

I had left the red and white china but probably will change it out this weekend; not fond of ed Valentine decor. 

Also have out white ironstone, 

and can't resist filling the pitchers with spring flowers, already appearing in the grocery store.

The bride's bench corner:

 My H Sandy/ NYC Flea market large crock filled with winter berries,

Another beautiful swap quilt by Barbara Black. 

and the big wooden bowl has its Valentine nod of heart shaped molds and cooky cutters. This corner has become a fun display area for me.

I thought this stack of textiles was interesting. I had pulled together linens for the switch to blue, then decided bare polished wood was better for winter. I must look for some lavender-lemon beeswax polish on etsy or a recipe for it to make myself. [Mel?].

Such an eclectic mix: a fine but sadly overused quilt remnant, a runner made with Japanese indigos, ikats. A small calico doll quilt, A handwoven Swedish table runner, Suzani print tablecloth from Pakistan. As the winter progresses I will rotate some of these pieces into my rooms for a change of "eye-interest".

My winter candles are: ''Fireside" and, well, "Winter".

Of course my days seem filled with endless frigid Mo walks. [However will we cope next week when it may be as cold as 7* and windy.]  I am already impatient with the layering needed to stay outdoors: on top of usual underwear, two pairs of pants, the outer one being wind and snow proof hiking pants. Two tee shirts, one cashmere turtleneck one Patagonia knitted fleece vest, a down parka. Wool socks, leg warmers. Scarf, headband, optional woolly pom hat. Outdoor clogs or Uggs. Fingerless mittens with thin Polar-Tec gloves underneath. My worry---if I need this when it's 30 out, how cold will I feel when it's zero!

Mo and I go out  at 5 now--still light!--to inspect the daily work of the giant earth movers. We dare not approach when the men and their trucks are operating.

They are so----exuberant, enthusiastic, piloting their giant beasts among the usually forbidden dunes, often at quite high speeds. It looks like they really enjoy their jobs.

 All work must stop by March 1st for the returning plovers, I hope.

The flood area was covered today, as were the big storm drains. And the ancient ship's timber that I loved, 3 feet + diameter, even tho squared---is gone/ buried. Probably no one but me knew it and loved It all these years, but still. I'm sad.

Now:

2011, same exact view:  "the shipwreck"

On our earlier walk we go the other direction sometimes.

Today we inspected the icy  koi pond. The koi are there, motionless, looking like frozen carrots under the skim of ice.

I'm not progressing as planned on my fun projects, too bad. Instead I tackled a big walk in closet that was stuffed to the rafters with ''someone else's" clothes. Suits, parkas, and golf shirts galore. I need the space to store my quilts , especially ones I plan to sell. They need to be measures and inspected and accessible. And I parted with two table cloths, I was a little uncertain about that, but they aren't useful to me...fun holiday themed but daily use cotton cloths from when my kids were small.

We donated everything to a local church that runs a soup kitchen for people in need; they will sort out warm clothes that are useful and donate or sell the rest, as fine Italian suits may be less than useful to their clientele. I was happy knowing the clothes and old paperback books would in part go to real people in need. There's more in that closet to remove but after filling 5 contractor bags with heavy wool suits and wooden hangers, I was so sore and exhausted that I had to cancel my thrifting/ dinner outing this week. Better now, but....?

My gesture to minimalist home, I suppose.

The weekend may be icy. I postponed breadmaking til then. And I plan to make a big dish of roasted veggies: parsnips, miniature sweet potatoes, tiny cippolini onions, green cabbage---for a variety of uses. I esp love the roasted vegs mixed with quinoa or farro. Have a good weekend! Stay indoors if it's icy.

love

lizzy

gone to the beach....

Below, I think this is cancelled? It will be too warm for accumulated snow. Fingers crossed.]

WINTER STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM SATURDAY AFTERNOONTHROUGH SUNDAY AFTERNOON...* WHAT...Heavy mixed precipitation possible. Total snowaccumulations of 3 to 5 inches and ice accumulations of up toone tenth of an inch possible. Winds could gust as high as 35mph.

PS I saw a great story, maybe on FB?: A woman responded to a minimalist guru whose rule is Keep only what you love and brings you joy; throw everything else away. The woman wrote in her Amazon review: ''I kept all my fabric  and I threw away your book."

April Quilting

Good rainy Thursday, my friends! Oh the dreariness of a frigid day in April, a bright January day would be an improvement.  April is two/thirds over already, not getting as much done as I had hoped and planned. The focal project of the month was to be Silent Night,below, all those tedious  dark blue and white stars, yawn. [more on it later.]

The April SG block from Barbara Brackman is an 8-pointed Friendship Star. Very intriguing and fun to think about! A challenge that totally distracted me from my planned project.

Points like this are sewed by what is called  Y seams or set in seams. I don't mind them at all, much easier than getting a bunch of points to match.

The secret is a precision  pattern, none of that EQ [Electric Quilt, a computer pattern thing] how-to copy and print to scale stuff for me. I drafted both the 12" and 9" Stars.

Pattern templates: I am maybe the only person left in the world who uses scissors and who makes cardboard templates for hand drawn pattern. But hey, it works for me!

Blue, 12", was first.

Somehow I got sidetracked and had the notion that pansies would be appropriate:  Pensees is their French name, meaning ''thoughts'', and they were, in Victorian times, a symbol of remembrance of school friends, and so on. I forgot the quilt design predates that idea but I like them anyway.
[*LOL, I typed school FIENDS instead of friends! Yeah we all went to school with mean girls, right?]

I wanted to use the pansies from this bluework print, taken from the idea of rework embroidery a fad that began around 1880 and ran through about 1930, blue dating later than red. It was hard to cut into this small piece, a fat quarter I guess.

This worked so well I immediately began 9 '' Hideous the next day.

Garish purple and poison green with badly chosen red corners. The value is wrong and hides the star shape. Frolicking goats for the center circle. It was that or the kid smoking a crack pipe, lower right.

I love the purple toile and actually thought about using it as the setting fabric too. Too bad I didn't check out the motifs before I decided to fussy cut,

.....

Next up is a  vintage quilt top I found on a fun new FB selling page. I actually won an auction there!
[Happy Vintage Linens and Sheets?].

Plaids like this can be brand new, made last week, or date from anywhere back to the late 1800s. This top is probably from 1920-1940. The fabrics are not rough or thick like modern ''homespun'', a term quilters use for wovens* like this. [*The design is woven with colored threads, not printed on or dyed.]

The half square triangles are BIG, I think 5" --- bigger than the palm of your hand. A subtle autumn feeling.

I also loved the poverty blocks, where the triangles are carefully pieced, not cut from a whole.

I'm airing it out, it's a bit musty, and auditioning backing. This assortment came from Connecting  Threads. Clementine's Bonnet HERE  Their fabric, while not inexpensive, is less costly than regular online quilt fabrics.

These are the two front runners:

the tomato red is pretty, but I adore the duck egg blue. I want yardage of this print, it is sooooo beautiful, color, sheen/ hand/ the tiny dots on the background , called  picotage.

The meandering Oak Leaves and Acorns on the left is intriguing too.

Again beautifully engraved printing. But it reads beige/ boring from a few feet away. I like my backings to pop or do something, anything.

[so that makes three quilts soon for the quilter, the queue is getting too long! Discouraging in a way.]

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And then--back to Silent Night.  It's a quilt I'm making because I want a blue Christmas / Winter quilt with a snowman on it, not because I think it's fun to make.

This is not an entertaining project, it's quite tedious.

I am very glad I laid out the blocks today for photos. It gave me a sudden glimpse of the finished size of the quilt. Jan Patek has a way of designing HUGE quilts. I had already planned to remove one horizontal row to make the quilt square, but now I am gong to remove another horizontal row and  a vertical row. I'll reassess at that point but I think that will be plenty big for my queen bed; I don't like quilts to hang all down to the floor, do you? And size is money, a smaller quilt will cost less to quilt later on.

So now I must make 25 white stars; ten are done so far. That's 100 Flying geese blocks that must be absolutely 2/1/2 " x 4 1/2" or the Stars won't go together. That's a lotta not-fun Geese,  not at all like the wild and crazy random Geese on my When the Wild Geese Fly quilt, made last winter.

I also cut the ''sky'' cornerstones XL. You can see where they are hanging over the at the ends, untrimmed.  The blocks get trimmed to exactly 8 1/2".  I have 10 made so far, plus the appliqued alternates.

For some reason it's not a good start-and-stop pattern: I keep forgetting how to make it and also have cut the blocks wrong at least twice!
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This is a wonderful photo from Weather Bug. Inspiration for a Star and moon quilt, isn't it beautiful.

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In Mo-Land, Mo has been naughty. He had a tantrum, tossed all the sofa cushions and throw pillows down and around. Then he dragged his blanky over to make a nest. Then he threw up. I sat in it of course, in nice clothes, when I got home. What a freakin' mess. Mo was bored, I suppose, he seemed quite pleased as he sat on the other, clean sofa and smirked while I cleaned.

have a good weekend. No snow, right? Please....

love

lizzy

gone to the beach......