two tops!

One would think with that title for a post I sewed a ton this week, but really, I got most of it done in two days.  I mean, I guess they were long stretches of sewing, but still...

After posting last week, I headed up to the sewing room to make some hearts for the baby quilt for my niece - something to make it taller.

I finished them, but you wouldn't know because did I take a photo?  Nope!

And then Monday, I didn't have to be to work till later in the day (shorter shifts lately due to a reduced staffing budget due to slower sales this time of year), and at first I told myself I'd just get the hearts sewn into rows.

And then I decided to just get the monsters into a row.

And then I decided to just go ahead and sew the heart rows to the monster rows.  I'd decide borders later.

And then I sewed one of the sashings for between the monsters and hearts to the wrong side of the hearts, so it became an outside border.  So I decided to add all the borders (though they might have been a little wider top and bottom had I not made the error).

The floral looks a little muddy when you see it from more of a distance, but the colors are looking fairly true here.  It's around 45" square.  It still feels like it's wider than it is tall, but the photo doesn't lie!

And then I stalled out for a good part of the week.  Read.  Napped.  Worked.  Spent too much time scrolling on my phone.

And then yesterday, I decided it was TIME to do something productive, so I made myself go into the sewing room and piece the back for this quilt.

ALL the cats wanted to help.  I had to move them a number of times and offended Freddie because I touched his paw (he was sunning himself) with the fabric as I tried to work around him.  He can be very prissy that way sometimes.

I had a fair amount of the floral, so that is in the center of the back and then I bordered it top and bottom with the black.  I was going to cut binding first, but I think I want to use the black (not enough of the floral left) and will need the parts cut off from the back after quilting, so that will have to wait.

And then, I was on a roll, so let's start putting those 36 blocks together for the quilt for my nephew!

16 inch blocks start out big and just get worse when you have multiples under the needle.  And there were a number of points to match in each block, so when I got to the LOOOOONG seams, it took a lot of pins.

But I got to the point where I knew I had just five long seams to go and I powered through.  (The hubby was patiently waiting for me to finish so we could go get dinner - I cooked every night this week and he wanted "real food" - cue the eyeroll!)

Around 5pm, I had a top!

I have no place to lay this out to get a good photo - even the clothesline (if it wasn't -200 degrees outside) isn't tall enough.  This is a large queen/small king size quilt, but since he has a queen bed and I wanted it to be useable with no fighting for a fair share, I erred on the side of bigger.

But honestly, as I was sewing and sewing and sewing all those geese, I kept wondering if I had miscalculated and actually sewed TWO quilts.  I'm glad I hadn't, but had a plan for the extra one if it happened.

I need to get a back for this, so I'll see what my local quilt shop has for wide backs so I can be lazy and not piece it.  But we'll see.  Usually those are kinda boring and I tend towards wilder backs.  Tomorrow.

So today my sewing room is empty of ongoing projects.  Or at least if I ignore a few older UFOs it is.  So we're ignoring them.

I have a quilt retreat coming up in April, so it's time now to shift gears and figure out what I'll be taking for that.  Probably at least one new project, but hopefully from the stash, so that will require some work.  I'd like to take the project(s) with pieces already cut, so that's where the real work comes in.

And then there's the books!

This is the one I referred to last week as "...good..." because it's just a little different, but in a good way.

It feels very much like an autobiography, but it is not.  I had to keep telling myself that this is not the story of the author but one from his mind.

The main character is an upper-middle-class man in his mid 40's who loses his parents in a horrible car crash.  He lives somewhere near the east coast (I can't remember) and they live in Montana.  He needs to go out to settle the estate - sell the farm and all that - and plans to drive out with his sister who will not fly.

When he arrives at his sister's house, she convinces him to take her guru with him instead - she is into all that spiritual stuff and he is very much not.  She would like to give her portion of the estate to this guru to set up a spiritual center there and so he agrees to take him.

The road trip that ensues is a bit comical, as the guru seems to have little knowledge of the country and the main character feels it his obligation to teach him.  But it seems the guru always has the last laugh - a lesson in the dangers of assuming things, I guess.

But along the way, the main character, who claims he has always felt a little on the edge of figuring out what his sister feels with her meditations and whatnot, manages to actually learn something about it and experience it as the guru challenges him back.

In that way it was a feel-good book.  You saw the main character grow a bit and learn about himself and become a more patient man.  Or at least he was trying to and able to maintain it somewhat around this strange man his sister sent him with.

And then I got to the last quarter of the book and got mad.  There are spoilers coming, so if you don't want to know, scroll down until you see the photo of the next book.

They arrive in Montana to find his sister there.  She flew.  She overcame her fear.

She is pregnant.  With the guru's baby.  They want to keep the parents home and live there and create the spiritual center on the land and raise their child there.

And it all felt like a forced road trip to make the main character get to know his future brother-in-law (I'm not sure they'll marry, but you get the gist) before the niece is born.  It was all a trick.  And that made me mad.  The book wasn't about what I thought it was about at all.

Or maybe it was.  But the revelation ruined it.  It lost like a whole star in my rating scale.

Anyways, I'm trying to focus on the better parts.  And then I read another book.

I bought this one with gift money a year ago and it finally came up in the random selection, so I was excited to read it.  Someone had recommended it somewhere online, so it was a better bet than the random selection at used book sales, right?

The blurb on the back is fairly cryptic.  Something happens and lives are changed forever.  That could describe a lot of books, right?  I found a blurb inside, as well, prefacing the readers guide discussion questions (that I detest - stop wasting paper) that was more descriptive and would have been a better sell for the back of the book.

But anyways, this one also kinda made me mad.

Set in the 60's in the Netherlands, after losing both of their parents in years past, three siblings are trying to get along and stay in touch and one brings his new girlfriend to lunch.  She seems like a flake and when said brother needs to travel for work, he asks if girlfriend can stay with sister in their childhood home, where she currently lives.  Reluctantly she agrees.

They don't get along.  Sister is uptight and afraid, girlfriend is more fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants and of course that makes for some tense moments.  In another book, they'd be funny, but told from the perspective of sister, they are not.  You feel her struggle and frustration.

And then comes the [more spoilers ahead] romance.  Between sister and girlfriend.  I'm not opposed to the fact of the romance, I'm opposed to a book that was shortlisted for a huge prize like The Booker Award to spend so many pages on sex scenes.  (I read up on the award to make sure I wasn't missing something and it's a literary award to be sure, so I'm still baffled.)

And then the inevitable truth that we, as readers, suspected, about the true relationship of girlfriend to the home.  That may spoil it, too, but I had a feeling about it from early on in the book, so you probably will too...

The story (minus the romance) was interesting - something I'd not thought about regarding houses during world war two.  And I suppose I learned something there.

But again with the books nominated for awards, this further cemented my theory that they are not for me.  Reading sex scenes, regardless of their participants, is not my jam.  And though I'm sure that's not what earned the nomination, it's what ruined the book for me.

Onward.  Started a new one last night.  Familiar author and so far (about 50 pages in) good.

Time to go throw the hubby's new pants in the dryer (he finally talked himself into buying more - I think the outing with other managers last week where he realized he had exactly ONE pair of pants that didn't have holes worn/burned into them or bleach stains covering them was the breaking point).  Of course, they all need washed before he wears them, so I guess I'll be thankful that I don't have to do it by hand.

Happy quilting and reading!
Katie