Go Bigger

I spent all day yesterday at the sewing machine. The new design is at an inflection point and I was curious to see what direction it was going to take. Until now, the quilt has been quiet, but a few days ago, it began to insist—quite loudly—that it wanted to be bigger than I originally planned. I tend to prefer lap quilts over bed-sized quilts as they can be switched out on the couch for display and snuggling under. This quilt has already surpassed lap quilt size.

These are 12” finished blocks, so that may have something to do with the quilt’s need to be bigger. I have plenty of scraps and the blocks are fun to make and go together quickly. I will keep sewing until the quilt tells me I’m done.

Today, though, I need to buckle down and work on the Noon and Night pattern. My self-imposed deadline for release is fast approaching. This is the cover art as it stands right now:

This was generated in EQ8. I still need a good photo of the quilt itself.

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I listened to the latest episode of the Living Free in Tennessee podcast while I sewed yesterday. The guest was a woman named Sue Zoldak, who is a friend of Nicole’s and a frequent guest. She owns The Zoldak Agency in Washington, DC, a company involved in advertising, marketing, and public policy. You might think she is an odd person to have as a guest on a podcast which tends to focus on homesteading, but she’s incredibly down-to-earth and shares all sorts of insights on marketing and business. Many of the people in this homesteading group are self-employed or have side hustles, so her advice is invaluable.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to describe my quilt-designing aesthetic. My niche in the knitting world is/was obvious: cabled designs. Broadly speaking, I like scrap quilts. I tend to lean more traditional than modern, but I don’t like traditional that looks dated. Marketers often talk about “the elevator pitch”—a one or two-minute description you could give to someone you were sharing an elevator with that would get the gist of your project across to them. This could be something like, “My aesthetic is mid-century modern married to vintage farmhouse with a soupçon of Baroque influence.”

[I totally made that up to sound ridiculous as possible.]

The word that keeps popping up when I think of my quilting style is “quirky.” I can’t get any fancier than that. Quirky is putting 1930s reproduction feedsack prints on a black background, and hey, would you also like to learn how to make a quilt block that almost went extinct? Quirky is taking the Broken Wheel block and doing something different with it other than piecing it in bright colors to make it look like flowers. There are a lot of Broken Wheel “flower” quilts out there. My Broken Wheel quilt is not going to remind anyone of flowers, I can assure you. And if I can teach you something about quilting technique or design while you’re making a quilt, that’s an added bonus.

I think I’ve found my lane.

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When I was in town the other day, I picked up a fat quarter bundle of Tim Holtz’s new fabric line, Abandoned.

This is quite a departure from his earlier fabric collections. I adore it. This line is full of bright, saturated prints. I’m not sure yet what I want to do with it, but I likely will be buying yardage of some of the fabrics.

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I managed to get us on the schedule for October at a meat processor about halfway between here and Missoula. I talked to Cathy yesterday, who found out that the meat processor we’ve both been using sold their operation to a family that raises cattle. This family has three sons and intends to process and sell their own cows. As of right now, there is no indication that they will take in other people’s animals.

Cathy bought half a pig from us and she said it is some of the best pork she’s ever eaten. She already reserved another half for this fall. The first time I cooked up a package of bacon, I said the same thing to the husband about the taste. This particular batch of pork is so good that I’ll occasionally dip a spoon into the bacon grease that I save for cooking and eat it. Mmmm. It’s like candy.

Is this a midwest thing or a Slovak thing or what?—When we were growing up, we used to have “bacon roasts.” My grandfather and my father and my uncles would build a bonfire in the backyard. They would put chunks of bacon on sticks and roast them over the fire, then drip the bacon grease onto pieces of rye bread. It was finished off with slices of raw onion and eaten. Bacon roasts were great occasions in my family. They were always accompanied by lots of Budweiser and several rounds of Jarts.