November 30, 2021: Monthly Mini – the ”Baggie Challenge” – plus Books and Earthly Delights

Greetings dear readers! We had a lovely Thanksgiving with a 4 day visit from our son and his partner who live in Brooklyn, NY – so nice after just being by ourselves last year!

I hope you were all able to spend some time with loved ones.
Because the latter half of the month was so busy, it’s a good thing I started my monthly mini at the beginning of it and essentially finished half way through. Not last minute this time! Janet at the excellent blog, Rogue Quilter, challenged the monthly mini participants to make a mini from a bag of scraps before the end of the year so I did that this month. Here’s my baggie of scraps:

These are scraps from my current ”Stormy Weather: Shine A Light” project, using largely Tilda fabrics. I’m not really a ”scrap quilter.” Even though I often use dozens, if not hundreds of different fabrics in my quilts, those fabrics are usually carefully chosen and not from a scrap bag. I separate my scraps into 2 bags as I go. The really small ones are given away every several months or so to someone who uses them for dog beds. The larger ones are often eventually bagged up and left on the give away table at my guild meetings. Anything large enough to be folded goes back into my stash. In this case I had been keeping a bag of scraps because they could be used to make the hundreds of leaves needed for the borders of Stormy Weather.

The scraps here were odd shaped and I decided to do something with flying geese, figuring I could get small triangles out of them:

I drafted a small paper pieced block, foundation paper piecing being a favorite technique, especially for small pieces.

Another example:

I cut a bunch of triangles:

Then I decided to arrange the little blocks in groups of 4, creating a larger block of 8 geese traveling in different directions. We were allowed to add a ”neutral” to the scraps so I chose a gray metallic Essex linen – really hard (impossible?) to see the metallic in the photos:

One block:

Nine blocks sewn together:

Sashing or no? I decided ”no.”

We were also allowed to add one other “color” not in the scrap bag. I interpreted that to mean one other ”fabric” and, after looking at lots of options, finally chose a vibrant floral for a border. I managed to squeeze out a narrow orange inner border from the scrap bag. So here it is!:

It’s machine quilted and 16.5 inches square. In lieu of piping, I added a row of orange embroidery stitches just inside the binding.

Another close up:

During the time in early November when I was working on this, the global conference on Climate Change was going on in Scotland. I was thinking we have a lot of hard choices to make in order to meet the challenges posed by this major issue for our planet. The ”geese” going every which way on the quilt symbolizes changing directions and the hard choices we face. I’m calling the quilt ”Hard Choices.” I found a colorful and fun fabric for the backing:

You can see the simple quilting in squares. I like the idea of the rain on the back too! Water is such a big issue with climate change – too little and there’s draught, too much and there’s flooding. These extremes are big problems the planet has to deal with. A final shot of the quilt:

I’ve always been a lover of stories and an avid reader and still make time for reading. Here’s what I’ve been reading recently:

I read ”Hamnet” a year and a half ago, but am rereading it for my book group – fantastic, literary writing and an excellent story about the death of Shakespeare’s only son – highly recommended and I’m finding it well worth reading a second time. ”Cloud Cuckoo Land” is the new book by the author of the wonderful book ”All The Light We Cannot See.” This one isn’t as good, but I still really enjoyed it. The writing is good and I found the stories of 5 people in 3 separate time periods (and what ultimately connects them) to be interesting. The Ken Follett book has been around for a while; a colleague gave it to me to read about 8 years ago and I’m finally getting to it! It’s not great literature, but it’s decently written, the story is compelling, and I love historical fiction and this takes place in the 12th century – great escapist fare. I probably enjoy this type of book in the same way that some enjoy murder mysteries or police procedurals, neither if which entice me.😊

Let me close out this post with a few earthly delights. The trees are mostly bare and winter approaches.

A few leaves found on the ground:

I like the textures of the leaves against the lichen in the background. Found this nest in the woods:

I’m lucky to live near the ocean. Here’s a marsh with the ocean just past those trees, seen on a recent walk. Late autumn:

More quilts from the Cocheco show and the Boston Museum coming soon!

Go to Wendy Reed’s blog, The Constant Quilter, to see all the minis from this month!

Be kind, be grateful, and cherish each day, Gladi