Broken Cross Check

That sounds like a reference app that's on the fritz, doesn't it? What I've really been doing is checking potential 36-patches for an inadvertent swastika image. I put up pairings for 20 blocks on the design wall, then took a photo and gray-scaled it for simplicity.

As long as there was a definite light frame around the center four dark squares, there was no danger of offensive misunderstandings in the blocks. Here's how they look in color:

Much more fun, yes? These are all "half pinwheels", in that there are only two pinwheel blocks used, paired with two plain 9-patch blocks. I have scores of plain 9-patch blocks already made; not so much with the pinwheel blocks, so in the interest of time I've opted to use what I've already got.

A Third Pinning, and a Finish

After a few days my back agreed to coöperate and I got a third top pinned.

By this point I was fast running out of my bendy basting pins and had to scrounge through all the other sizes I've collected over the years. I eked them out and didn't have to resort to the diaper pins (or those equivalent in size) that I also have.

Pinning marathon

Maybe I woke this morning feeling invincible. Maybe I woke especially stupid. I know the two aren't mutually exclusive! But for whatever reason (perhaps because I had the batting already cut for me and I had two backings ready to go), I decided to pin two quilt sandwiches today.

My back is making sure I remember the consequences of that decision so that I never, ever think about doing that again!

The first sandwich was the intentional goal for today--the split-9 floral.

Stalled

The COVID caught me last week and it's taken me until yesterday to feel well enough to be in public again. But my down time wasn't unproductive time. I cleared several hundred emails from my various mailboxes, something I kept putting off for a time I was under the weather and recliner-bound anyway. I also was able, after the first 3 days, to summon the interest and energy to get into my studio and sew a bit.

The first thing I did was take a picture of what was hanging on the design wall, so I could look at it from a distance and make any changes deemed necessary.

Now that's a full design wall!

Vanity

I've been idly wondering what vanity I'll carry with me to the Afterlife, and I think it'll be about my intelligence. It's useful, and plenty, and I'm proud of it.

Always have been.

 

Most of the time.

Letting go

As soon as I trimmed all the 4.5" triangle squares (previous post), I started sewing them to the dark/medium and light 3.5"squares I had cut weeks earlier, with an eye toward making this top.

Mind Games

When we were growing up, my mother would send me in to help my youngest sister clean her messy room because, as she explained it to me, I could always make a game out of it.

She was right, of course, and it's something I continue to this day--making a game of Tedious Tasks.

The latest "TT" has been a result of my decision to quilt each wonky star by itself--all 80 of them. I made up the game of "4 Esses" to get through them without losing interest or momentum, and to keep myself active as well.

For every Star I quilted, I'd get up and move to the cutting table where . . .

Burying the beginning threads before stitching over them.