Back in the Saddle Again

I just KNEW Rissa was going to jump in with an agreement on WordPress! The only reason I haven't swapped over yet is because she's the only person I know well enough to ask questions of who uses it and I don't want to overload her. Jonathan, you have a great blog yourself and the video tour of other blogs was a stroke of genius. So we can chalk up TWO advantages to the NaBloPoMo movement (with apologies to Arlo) in that not only has it gotten me blogging regularly, but I've discovered some really good blogs I would have never found otherwise.

I got started on a new quilt yesterday, thinking I needed to get in gear making my annual donation to the Draw Down silent auction at the school. It's held in February and I tend to start thinking about it, oh, the end of January, usually. This will be my 5th quilt and it's Aidan's last year at St. Joe. Once she's gone, I may hang up the needles for that particular fund-raiser, but maybe not. After 17 years of daily contact with that same group of people it may be hard to just walk away. So anyway, I had no plan, no design, no well-thought-out idea of what the hell I was going to do, but I was saved by my constitutional inability to EVER put anything back where it came from. Lo and behold, I was tripping over the bin of batiks in all those gorgeous jewel tones and Earth colors. I've been wanting to actually USE some of the rust-dyed fabric I make rather than just making it too, and the colors seemed to work very well together. I made half a dozen or so blocks with curved piecing before I remembered why I DON'T do curved piecing. If I'd stuck with that ill-conceived plan, I'd be making a new quilt come the end of January anyway. Sooooo.....from scratch, wonky log cabin-ish blocks and some weird ladder things and some strange triangle things, and free hand cut strips and not-quite-square rust centers and I was off and running. After a trip to the Big Lots for a new iron of course. Alas, I finally conceeded defeat to an electrical appliance that IS smarter than me. The power strip threw the breaker the first time I used it and the 9 lb cord tended to get in the way. I'll report back on the new Proctor Silex next week after I've used it. Unless I kill it before then. I do like the HUGE water tank on it and the 1 hour shut-off. A simple button on the side turns it back on too. I think I can handle that.

Anyway, the quilt will ultimately be the blocks and filler things, and some of the blocks I'll just keep building on until they're big, some will stay relatively small. I want the rust stuff in the center of the blocks to be spread out sort of randomly over the face of the quilt and not lined up like little tin soldiers in nice neat lines and rows. I will ultimately quilt this one to within an inch of its life with (most likely) copper colored thread. It surprises me how pleased I am with this one too, since it's NOTHING like my usual. Not my colors, too busy, it's pieced, no negative space, and for damn sure no design to it. No metallics, no primaries, no lime green, and no appliques. The blocks in the picture are basically just scattered across the ironing board at this point but you can see the colors and general idea I'm shooting for.