Quilting, Sewing, Crocheting, Celebrating

Thinking to collect and purge them from my mind, I made a (too) long list of all the bad things 2020 has presented. Alongside the list I wrote scripture from Psalm 25:

Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted.

Relieve the troubles of my heart, and free me from my anguish. 

Praying into this Word through these tough times - not only for myself but for others- is all I know to do. There's nowhere else to turn but toward God.

As you might deduce, I'm not happy about still staying at home. It's getting old. It makes me sad.

But I'm also trying very hard to count my blessings: manageable good health; mobility that I can exercise and take long power walks; (too) good food to eat; and a lovely, safe harbor in which to live and pass pleasant days creating. I'm also grateful that my dad is safe, though alone in independent living in a care facility; our kids and spouses still have jobs; our grandkids are returning to a different-looking school year; and no one in the family has contracted COVID-19. 

For us personally, everything is fine. It's just tough not to carry the weight of the world, including anxiety for all the people living in the path of Hurricane Laura. While at QuiltCon in February (that seems years ago, now) I met, for the first time, an Instagram friend @mtweedel who lives in Beaumont, Texas. I've been in touch, and she has evacuated.

Making hasn't stopped. I've continued to quilt my Hole Punch Ribbon quilt. The wavy designs I had in mind are coming along nicely. 

While this is mostly walking foot quilting, I've put on the FMQ foot a few times too, for some of the curves that are a little tight. 

To quilt this design, I used a blue wash-out marker to draw divisions along each side of the quilt. I drew about ten of them - five on each side of the center design. That "vertical" wave in the center is one of them. 

Then, starting at the bottom, on one side, I filled in that section. When it was complete, I moved to the opposite side (still at the bottom), and filled in that section. Thus, I've been alternating from side to side, section to section. I have two more sections to quilt. 

An aqua solid probably wasn't the best choice for backing, but it's the only fabric that looked okay with the front, and for which I had the yardage needed. To allow for an orange top thread and aqua bobbin thread, I change the Bernina's tension to 4.75. That's so the aqua thread isn't visible on the quilt top. 

The quilting texture is showing very nicely, probably due to using - for the first time - Hobbs 80/20 that's cotton and wool! I bought a king-sized batt to try, so will happily use this again in another quilt.

After 2½ years, I finished crocheting the Moorland afghan. It's 46" X 62", and it covers me nicely while watching TV under the ceiling fan. Of course, I didn't use the colors called for in the pattern, but substituted my own range of 15 Florida colors.

The other fun I've had is prepping to make some clothes. Using two different downloadable PDFs made for quite a bit of printing and taping paper together to get the patterns I wanted, so doing that as well as cutting out garments, took most of a day. But now I have four garments ready to sew: knit dress; chambray dress; knit top; and bottom weight shorts. Depending on the sizing and fit, I anticipate making more clothes so as not to make so many quilts!

Today is our 48th wedding anniversary. Our celebration looks different than past anniversaries, as we're staying at home, jointly preparing a special meal (I'm making French bread and sort of tiramisu dessert), eating by candlelight on the lanai (if it isn't too hot), and opening a bottle of Reverie wine we bought in Napa Valley in 2011. Here's my old blog post about that out-west trip.

We were so young! My talented mother made my wedding gown and created my headpiece. 

Book Recommendation #50! 

I've read, reviewed and rated 50 books so far this year!

 

The Light in the Ruins by Chris Bohjalian is another story that's told between two times: 1955 in Florence (Italy) with detective Serafina; and 1943 in the Italian countryside villa of then 18 year-old Cristina Rosati and her family. Serafina must find a killer, and that leads her to search for remembrances of her own war story. To figure out "who done it," the reader is returned again and again to what happened during the war among German and Facist regimes, as Cristina falls for a German officer and the Rosati family's villa becomes the scene of history, war, and lost innocence. The narrator is one you've likely heard before: Cassandra Campbell.

As much as I often like this kind of book, for a while I intend to lay off of fictionalized stories of WWII. I've read plenty of such books that are excellent - think Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, and The Lost Vintage by Ann Mah  - but I'm ready for topics that are a little lighter.

Linda's score: 3.8/5.0

If you comment on this blog post, you'll notice that I've added "word verification." That's because, since last week I've had more than a dozen smutty, foul and disgusting comments posted on old blog posts. Just as soon as I reported each one as spam and deleted it, another appears on the same post! I felt it necessary to put a stop to them with word verification. I'll return comments to the old format when I think it's safe again. Linda