Phoebe Gets Her Quilt

It is a big deal for me to finish a quilt! I started Phoebe's quilt in October 2018 and finished 14 months later.  Now, each of my children sleeps under a quilt I made.  Oh, that makes me happy!

For Phoebe's quilt, I used crib sheets and scraps of clothing that she and we wore.  I limited the colors to pink, blue, and yellow, but I mixed in little exceptions to liven things up.

I am quite serious about sewing down my stash, so I used the white fabric I had on hand for the squares, which means there are actually two slightly different whites.  For a few weeks after I made this choice, I was ashamed; the church of my childhood believed in  matching as part of its religion. For years, I have been slowly growing away from this perfectionism. Quilting and mending are spiritual metaphors for me, I reminded myself, so these whites are my choice to "gather up the fragments and let nothing be lost" (paraphrased from Jesus' words in the book of John after he extended the little boy's lunch of  bread and fish to feed thousands of people).

Another use-it-up material did not work out so well for this quilt.  I bought pink yarn from the creative reuse store, making ties in the center of each pieced star with the goal of little felted balls.  But when I put the finished quilt through a hot wash and dry, the ties would not felt: the yarn was not 100% wool.  Cussing a little and refusing to drive and seek pink wool, I re-did the ties with pink perle cotton in my stash.

I like to work in a bit of machine quilting on my quilts, but it didn't seem to fit in Phoebe's quilt.  So I handquilted the whole thing in white perle cotton, outlining the stars and then highlighting them further with diagonal lines.  I am not fond of quilting that runs all over a quilt, but prefer quilting that works in harmony with the patchwork.

Phoebe's quilt pleases my eye.  She loves it, and so do I.  I am already deep into another patchwork project for the patchwork surprise I adore, as well as the pleasurable mental work of planning and dreaming The Next Quilt until I blink and find myself cutting fabric for it.  I'll keep you posted.

Still Here

I have plans to knit myself a robin's egg blue hat.  I'm almost done with a pair of striped socks for Phoebe. 

The superintendent came to the PTO meeting tonight, and I am now fired up about inequitable school funding and considering more ways to get involved. Mr. Thrift is not pleased, as I run intense about stuff like this and he would prefer I calm down. I might.

The oldest has a new pet, a sweet little bunny,  that she worked long and hard to prepare for, but I was still out to the Amish stores yesterday to buy pellets and see about getting hay for her to burrow in. 

I bought the most beautiful, soft fabric at the creative reuse store the other day - I think, I dare to hope, it may be cashmere; the strongest, most declarative green  - not kelly, not dark green, just a strong, rich green green.  

I overheard a standholder at market say she needed to get rubberbands for the egg cartons, and I had a bag of rubber bands down to her the very next market day because I am oversupplied.  We were both tickled.  And this is also the stand that still has local storage veggies, which I am so grateful for because buying and eating local food is my act of defiance and hope in the face of very large world problems.  

Phoebe has had a dreadful cough and of course, it is worst at night and people are sleeping poorly around here. We read the news about the coronavirus with disbelief and worry. 

I do laundry every day.  I keep up!  I keep the family in good food.  I have a sore foot that is healing very very slowly, so I can't jog as much and this is changing my mental and physical health.  I do Pilates.  I try. 

Ben has soccer games and soccer practices just about all the time (it seems).  He just absolutely loves it, so I try to work on my attitude about driving him all over creation.  We carpool, and I take my knitting along, and I enjoy my boy enjoying himself. 

I am studying sourdough bread.  I have borrowed books on the subject, and one or two blogs I read.  I made a few notes.  I make something with sourdough every week, as I have for about 10 years now, but I am tweaking and understanding it differently, and the feel of the silky strong dough is pure delight in my hands. 

I finished Phoebe's quilt.  That does really need its own blog post. I'll be back.