penny-studionotes-2

I'm making steady progress on the quilt. I'm guessing these are about 1/3 of the blocks that I'll need. I'm in no hurry to finish, and am enjoying the pace of completing a unit every day or two. You can't tell from the photos, but the hand-dyed dark blues are lovely, with a velvety appearance that makes you want to touch the quilt.

I'm thinking of working on no more than one block a day , so that I don't get frustrated with the process of working on these blocks. Even though it may look like random improvisational piecing, I learned when making the first "confetti" quilt that each block is a composition in itself, which then needs to find its spot within a larger composition. It's a challenging process, with a fair amount of ripping and restarts along the way. The block above is what I finished this morning. So now I have these two blocks: The block on the right is two sections seamed together vertically (just to the right of the turquoise bit). This may or may not stay this way--I hadn't noticed the secondary "lightning" pattern of the lighter blue in the background. Perhaps it will work, perhaps not.  I can see that I need to approach this project with both curiosity and patience.

Last fall, I posted about three wedding quilts that I'd completed in the previous months; that post is here . At the end of the post, I wrote this: All three of the recipients (two brides, one groom) were people who had grown up knowing my son Jeremy, and one of them was an especially good friend.  It was a great delight to be included in these celebrations, each of them thoughtfully put together, permeated with the personality and commitments of each couple. But by the third, all so close together, I couldn't help but feel a deep sadness too, that Jeremy didn't make it to this stage of life. . .  Sitting here thinking about this, it occurs to me that I could still make a wedding quilt for Jeremy, imagining what he might like. I think his favorite color would still be blue. So, in the last couple of months, I've begun working on a wedding quilt for Jeremy. For readers who don't know, Jeremy died in 2004 at age 18; he would be 33 now.  It's been almost three year...

Back in September, I posted about a beading workshop I'd taken, and my intention to use beads to embellish some hamsas; that post is here .  But then I never showed what I came up with. In the subsequent months, I made three hamsas with beads, two of which have beads as embellishment to stitching, and then one where the decoration is entirely in beads. The first one is finished; the other two are not yet sewn up into final form. I like all of these. I don't know if I'll do one with all beads again--I like how it looks, but it was  much  more time consuming than the ones that also have embroidery. I also don't find beading as relaxing as embroidery. You can click on any of these to enlarge the image.