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Once upon a time there was a little boy who lived at our house who loved bugs. You have your dinosaur kids and your heavy equipment kids and your Bob the Builder kids. Well, we had a bug kid. And it turned into an opportunity for Personal Growth for me--I learned to see insects and spiders through his eyes and for the most part, I lost my antipathy toward them.

Of course, there was the time when the praying mantis egg case hatched in the house...

But anyway. I made this little quilt as a wall hanging for his bedroom.

I've always loved the names and heritage of quilt block names, and how we can use them for our own purposes, adding our own meanings and heritage along the way. So there was nothing to be done for this quilt except a Spider Web block, and of course it had to have spiders and insects in the quilting too.


My son loved it and it had a place of honor on his bedroom wall for a good many years.


How I wish they had had those bug jar quilts when he was little--how he would have loved that too. And I could have indulged in more Personal Growth (personal stash growth, that is) as I collected all the fun bug fabrics.

Heading Out Yet Again

My husband's elderly aunt has passed away and we're headed to Upper Michigan for her funeral and a bit of family time with the northern relatives.

HOPING the snow has melted up there...

Back mid-week.

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It was the late 80s and we were living in southwestern Ohio and making regular treks to Upper Michigan to visit family. The Yoop is a winter kind of place--they joke about the area's two seasons: winter and poor skiing. We usually made a Christmas-time trip and took the kids and ourselves skiing.

Our favorite spot was Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, where plentiful lake effect snow made artificial snowmaking unnecessary. You rode up the chair lift, disembarked, turned around and there before you lay Lake Superior in all its chilly majesty. So beautiful.

And inspirational.

This quilt was called Skiing in the Porkies and was meant to capture that Up North ski feeling in a stylized way. I wanted to depict ski trails among the trees, and most especially the ski tracks, which always looked like quilting designs to me. This was hand-quilted, and I had the idea to add silver-lined beads, for snowy sparkle.

The border was meant to suggest Lake Superior nearby.


And I always liked the cute ski fabric I found for the backing. There may still be a bit of that in the stash.


I still like this quilt, although I can see that at the time I was extending only the most tentative toe into art quilting. I guess I never have been one for the emphatic, throw-caution-to-the-winds artistic statement. If I made this quilt now, it would be bolder and way more visually interesting. I'd use a variety of whites for the snow and the trees would be looser and more free-form. And the border: I'd definitely do a wider and more intricate color-varied blue border. After all, Lake Superior is much bigger than a puny double row of half square triangles!

Celestial Dream

I wanted to share a spectacular quilt that was unveiled at the bring-and-brag at our Jones Mansion retreat.


Meet Celestial Dream, the work of my friend Flo. I met Flo through the old Quilt Bee list years ago and ours is one of the weirder internet friendship stories: through emails back and forth, we discovered that we had lived in the very same Milwaukee apartment at different times. In fact, Flo and her friends appear to have moved in right after my friends and I moved out, back in the 70s. Quite the coincidence. We even slept in the same bedroom. Amazing.

Anyway--Celestial Dream. This pattern was offered by Summer House, now apparently out of business, back in the mid-90s. The designer is Susan Powell. Flo bought the full kit for this quilt and has been plugging away on it for nine long years, with time out for burn-out (she said the windows and mullions and shutters on the house in the bottom panel nearly killed her), a graduate degree, travel, and various family events. Flo does masterful hand appliqué and this quilt is just so impressive.


The punch line for this quilt is that it was always intended as a gift for Flo's daughter, who didn't want it quilted. She wanted it to be TIED. Fortunately, the daughter eventually came to her senses and the finished quilt is an exuberant and glorious sight.



Looking around online, it looks like many people bought the pattern for this quilt but that only a fortunate few have had the time, energy, and stick-to-it-ive-ness to see it through to completion.

Saluting you, Flo! Maybe if I hang out with her more often, I could get my Sue Spargo quilt off the ground. I need someone with her discipline and drive to rein me in and get me going on that one!

Retreat Notes #1

Back from another great quilt retreat.

I was at the Jones Mansion in Mineral Point, Wisconsin, from last Wednesday night to Sunday. Now that's what I call a weekend. And what a place! It's a hundred year old house with a studio that's been fitted out just for quilters and crafters with great lighting and places to sew, cut, and press. Owner Lori Bartol does a wonderful job of making quilters and other groups feel welcome and cared for.

And Mineral Point itself is chock full of charming old houses, intriguing galleries, shops, and restaurants. It's a great place to spend a few very relaxing days.


A dozen friends and I had a terrific time sewing, eating (some meals were collaborated upon at the house and others were enjoyed at some of the many cool eateries in town), and catching up on each others' lives.

There was one heart-stopping moment. One evening I was knitting while others sewed. The vibration of sewing machines on the table caused a glass of red wine to tip over all over me, a table mate, the carpet, and worst of all, on THE WHITE KIDSILK HAZE SHAWL. Arrgh.


Two of us bolted downstairs with the shawl and two balls of yarn, which were also dotted with red wine. We rinsed everything out and I was reasonably optimistic that things would be OK. Then Lori, the owner of the house, appeared with a spray bottle of this stuff. Let me tell you, it's a miracle in a bottle. After treating the shawl, the yarn, and our clothes and shoes, and the carpet with it, all appeared fine. HIGHLY recommended.

We spread the shawl out to dry and the next morning it looked perfect. Thank goodness. When it was all dry, I picked up the knitting, needles still poised in mid-stitch, right where I was when the wine glass flipped over, and I was able to go on knitting like nothing had happened.

I'm not much for believing in miracles, but that may be as close to a miracle as I'll ever see,

Perhaps the wisest course is to NOT enjoy red wine while knitting with white yarn? But if the worst happens, all is definitely not lost. And I'm living proof.

Between Trips

Back from Washington, D.C. My daughter is now a J.D. Once she navigates the Bar Exam this summer, she can officially call herself a lawyer. Very proud!!



We had a great time at the official Howard University ceremonies (including a performance by a gospel choir that had everyone in tears), meet-and-greets, and dinners out with her university family and friends--what a terrific bunch of people! But weather was not cooperative. When it wasn't pouring rain, it was sullen and gray and cold. Not the sunny, warm Washington I've come to expect at this time of year.

But despite the rain and chill, it was a terrific Mother's Day for me-- what could be better than to celebrate by cheering as one of your kids achieves a huge life-milestone? Quite the thrill. Will and his girlfriend flew in for the weekend's festivities too, so we were all together. I couldn't ask for more.

Now on to the next act: I'm organizing to leave Wednesday for a quilt retreat in Mineral Point, WI, with a dozen or so quilting buddies. Projects going along with me: the red and white Delectable Mountains quilt, the Serendipity quilt (needing only binding and it will be D.U.N.), a new project involving the Fun Patch template and inspired by this, a table runner project using a set of antique blocks, and the wedding shawl. And a couple small gifty projects too. Should be enough to keep me busy for a few days...

Before packing for the next trip though, there was this to deal with at home:


Not complaining--few things are better than picking asparagus in your own yard, bringing it inside and cooking it immediately.

I'll be back next week, with project updates, some new inspirations, and some Friday Archives projects, fresh from the vaults.

Out of Town

We are heading to Washington, D.C. to celebrate the our daughter's graduation from Law School. Big celebrating is about to begin. Yippee!

Blood, Sweat, Kidsilk Haze,and the Eureka Moment

Something missing from this blog of late has been knitting. I had been sailing along on the wedding shawl but then hit a huge wall and had been unable to get past it. For several months.


I completed the main part of the shawl and had only to make the narrow knit-on border. This would be a new experience for me. But I had already figured out knitting lace--how hard could a tiny border be?




Well, pretty hard. It had me flummoxed. Three new skills at once were too many--the provisional cast-on, the lace pattern itself, and the actual attaching of the border on the shawl. It all sounded doable on paper, but when I tried to put it all together I ended up with confusion. And confusion in that blasted Kidsilk Haze is to be avoided at all costs since it's virtually un-froggable.

I tried knitting the lace pattern in scrap yarn to get a handle on the pattern's workings. I knit it over and over and over again. Only 12 stitches and an 8 row repeat, for goodness sakes! I wrote out each row and that helped, but stitch counts still weren't coming out right. And being unable to handle a pattern over a measly 12 stitches was damn frustrating.

I'm very happy to say that I sat down with it all over the weekend and figured it out. Eureka! The clouds parted and Kidsilk Haze gods smiled down on me. Everything came together.

It all came down to figuring out the charted directions on binding off TWO STITCHES in the pattern and most especially, realizing that the border isn't actually knit on a separate set of needles. Slap to forehead!

It's all happening!

My Back Pages

A new meme! I'm jumping on board Loobylu's Friday Archives bandwagon, unearthing things perhaps best left buried in the dusty vaults. Readers can marvel and/or snicker, as they desire.

We're traveling back to those days of yesteryear when quilters were taking first tentative steps. And mine were more tentative than most. My very first quilt was made in 1976, a baby gift. It was composed of 6 inch squares of red and white gingham and navy and white gingham, in various size checks. It was carried around and loved into oblivion. I guess that means it was a success, despite its being made of icky poly-cotton. The recipient is now grown, married, and mom to her own little daughter.

So that brings us to the oldest quilt I made that's currently in my possession. This was made as a baby quilt for my firstborn in late 1978. I loved it and was so pleased with it at the time.

OK, now this takes courage to show, but here it is:

All-cotton fabric was so hard to find. I'm quite sure the red sashing and backing fabric is a poly-cotton, and there's more of that darned gingham. I know the batting was a puffy polyester. ALL I could find. The backing was sewn onto the quilt pillowcase-style and then turned right side out. And I didn't even try to quilt it--I tied it with yarn.


I had to grow into the patience to quilt a quilt. The whole idea of actual quilting stitching seemed way overwhelming to me when I was in my 20s.

Amazing, isn't it--how we grow into loving the process? It's one of the rewarding things about getting older IMHO.

At the time, I was really pleased with the black calico in this quilt, and I used it to make a teddy bear for another friend's baby. In time, and not too much time as I recall, the color of the teddy bear faded out to nothing. So this quilt stays folded up in a cedar chest to retain as much color as possible.

And with this quilt, being kept in the dark and out of sight is probably the best thing. LOL

No Thinking Required

FINALLY it's spring enough around here to produce a few daffodils. After the winter we had in these parts, even this little bit of color is HUGE.

Over the last three weeks, I've been taking a class in the website design program Dreamweaver. The library website is my baby, and up to now, we've worked in FrontPage. Several years ago, FrontPage seemed pretty challenging to learn, but Dreamweaver--sheesh! I'm expected to understand the file structure of a website? And CSS? and HTML?? None of that was really necessary for using FrontPage.

My brain is stretched to the max.

Something is going to have to start making sense soon, because the entire library system changes servers in two months, and everything has to be up to snuff in Dreamweaver by that point.

It's been nice to come home and spend some evening time with the Serendipity quilt, especially since I decided to go with the mindless squiggle quilting.

Mindless is the operative word here. Right about now, that's a good thing.