Getting Started

As I child I loved the mindless hours I spent cutting out clothes for my paper dolls.  I wondered if I would recapture that feeling as I traced and cut the petals for the Joseph's Coat. I was looking forward to finding zen in the art of applique.

I was able to cut 368 petals from the 10 yard roll of fusible. There was something meditative about tracing and cutting the same shape over and over. And now I have 30 blocks worth! The quilt takes 637 but I think this is a good stopping spot. The next step was to fuse the shapes to the fabric, trim the seam allowance and turn it down. I made 89 before I was compelled to count again. I have an idea about how I am going to arrange the colors and can't be certain until I see it up on the design wall.  

So, I bought 8 yards of  Kaffe Fassett's shot cotton in Blueberry. Starched it. And have begun to applique. 

Where was I?

When I put more food on my plate than I could possibly eat, my mom would say, "your eyes are bigger than your belly".  I haven't changed much - I pack for quilt retreats that way.  Project after project goes into the suitcase, just in case something changes and there are more than 24 hours in a day.

Once I arrived at the hotel, I took off for the nearest quilt store because I had learned that they carried Floriani stabilizers.  Eureka!  The Yankee Quilter, had the elusive water soluble fusible I needed for the Joseph's Coat. Now I could relax and settle in at my worktable and start sewing. Something else.

Something Else was finishing the graduation present for MB before another year passed. I needed to fill in the blanks by cutting the setting and corner triangles so I could sew the diagonal rows of alternating nine-patches and rail fence blocks together.

My friend Micki's Quilt is Missing Pieces too.

My constant companion, the incredible SmartPhone has a handy ap because now I don't have to bring quilting books on retreat too. Which leaves valuable real estate for packing still more projects.

If you don't own a smartphone, another trick is to take a photo with your digital camera of pages from books you own and keep them on the memory card. You can zoom in to read the fine print.

I sewed and sewed and ripped and gabbed and took a hike and photos and gabbed and sewed and finished

the Top!

And Nothing Else.