Tag: a stitchin hot mess

  • A Year Late

    I started this quilt back in August of last year. It was meant to be a wedding gift for my son Jarod and his then-fiancée Aubrey, who got married in October. I cut the first squares with plenty of time to spare, or so I thought. Life kept getting in the way.

    I finally got it finished last week, and I shipped it to them this morning. It’ll get there before their first anniversary, and before the cold weather hits up there. They live in North Dakota.

    It’s a quilt-as-you-go pattern in their favorite colors. Fall/Autumn. Because it was quilt as you go I didn’t need to do a whole lot of quilting. Just enough to attach the top to the back. So I just did around the shapes about a half inch out from the seams.

    The binding is scrappy, made from a mix of the leftover fabrics, but I wanted it balanced instead of totally random, so I enlisted the help of my brother Dave who did the math to make sure everything lined up right.

    It was a hilarious two hour phone call trying to explain to my brother what a binding was, why I needed a binding, what shape the fabrics were going to be, and why the black fabric wasn’t gonna be on the corners. I laughed so hard. It was so fun.

    Because of his efforts to learn about quilting and the math he put into it, I added a line to the label:

    Quilt math by Uncle Dave.

    Now that’ll be part of the quilt for as long as it exists. Seems only fair, since I definitely wasn’t doing that math myself.

    So — a year late, but it’s done, and I absolutely love it!

    Quilt top. I love these colors. And I love how the piecing came out.
    View of binding against the back. Not the greatest idea to show a black quilt on a black quilt. But you get the idea.

  • Cat Cult at Midnight

    Last night was… quiet. Too quiet.
    Usually, by the time I’m in bed, I’ve got the soundtrack of my life going—Zephyr thundering through the house, Zazu sprinting up the pole, Zuri hissing at someone for breathing wrong. But not this time.

    It was unnerving enough that I pulled up my living room camera to see what was going on.

    Zuri the black cat curled up in the hallway, blocking the entrance to Zephyr’s room.

    There was Zuri, curled up in front of the hallway like a furry bouncer, blocking the entrance to Zephyr’s room—the same room where he stayed for several weeks when he first arrived. It’s his safe space. Zuri won’t go in there herself, but she does like to guard the doorway.

    I got up to investigate. Lights on, a full sweep of Zephyr’s room—nothing. He wasn’t there. Neither was Zazu. I was halfway back to my bedroom when I saw it.

    Zazu and Zephyr perched on top of the kitchen cabinets, staring down.

    There they were. Perched together on top of the kitchen cabinets. Silent. Motionless. Glowing eyes fixed on me. A secret cat meeting? Late-night plotting session? I’ll never know.

    Meanwhile, Zuri was still on hallway patrol, looking very much like someone who didn’t get the invite. I almost felt bad for her—almost—but if she’d stop being such a diva, she might actually get included.

    With these three, silence is never a good sign.