The Quilt Says No

I discovered that the employees at Joann Fabrics are quite taken with WS. He had been there on Tuesday with his mom and then on Wednesday with me. I stopped there yesterday on my way to pick up a concrete saw blade for the husband. As I was perusing the remnant rack, the manager came over and asked me if WS knew how to sew. I explained that he was learning, and she proceeded to tell me how he came in with his mom and picked out his own fabric and paid for it with his own money, and they all thought he was the cutest kid ever.

[Even though Kalispell has grown quite a bit in the last decade, I get glimpses every so often of what it used to be like, when everyone at the store knew your name and the names of your friends.]

I think that WS and I need to work on building a punkin’ chucker this summer. We could position it in the garden to launch excess zucchini into the pig pasture. That’s a whole physics lesson, right there.

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I made binding and attached it to the cream/white Candy Coated quilt, and that is my handwork for the next couple of evenings:

I also pulled out the prototype Noon and Night squares and made quilt sandwiches with them so I could test out thread and quilting patterns. I started with the smoky gray thread and straight diagonal lines, but even before I finished quilting the second line, the block was yelling “No!” at me. It did not like either the thread or the straight lines. I pulled out a different thread and plan to play around with some allover quilting designs this morning—probably loops, to start—but I am beginning to suspect that this quilt is only going to be happy with echo quilting in and around the blocks. There are times when it’s okay to compromise on design decisions for the sake of expediency. I don’t think this is one of them.

I am still aiming for a January release of this pattern. The release date might be January 31, but January is the goal. The bulk of the pattern is done; I need to add a few details and have some other eyes look it over.

And I whipped up a few more Christmas stockings, just to refine my version of the pattern and the assembly process in case I want to offer them as custom orders next year. I can get two stockings out of a half-yard of fabric (with another half-yard for the linings), but that is only if I remember to flip the pattern piece when cutting it out, as I am cutting on a single layer of fabric. I forgot to do that on one of the stockings, so now I have two fronts instead of a front and a back, and Joanns doesn’t have any more of that print. The store in Missoula still lists it as being in stock. If I get down there in the next couple of weeks, I might be able to snag what I need. If not, I could use a coordinating print for the back.

That leak in our bathroom seems to have stopped—how mysterious—but I am hoping the husband has that on his list of things to investigate today. I need to get ready for Christmas, too. DD#2 arrives Wednesday afternoon for a couple of days and she needs a place to sleep.