Today after church, several people who talked to me expressed sadness on my part that I was going to be alone on Easter afternoon.

(That always puzzles me a little; were I so sad to be alone, I'd have found a way to be not-alone by now.)

Quite the opposite from being lonely, I passed a peaceful and happy afternoon. I listened to the Rangers beat the A's on the radio (I'm not much of a baseball fan but I love listening to the announcers. I love how they can be talking about their golf game or something, and then something happens in the game, and they switch seamlessly to telling us what is going on. I love the cadence of their voices. I love the sort of hushed, summer-in-a-cool-shady-house feeling of the sound of the game*).

While I was listening, I finished this:




It's the most recent quilt. It's a downscaled version of the "Antique Button Bazaar" quilt from - um, I think it was McCall's quilting. Probably the May issue. I'm bad about remembering things like that. I'm not going to put the buttons on it like in the "inspiration" quilt - I use my quilts to wrap up in when I read, or fold them up and use them like a pillow behind my back (or sometimes fold them up and sit on them for certain yoga poses), and I don't think the buttons would be all that comfortable.

The quilt is slightly smaller than twin bed size. I'm very happy with it. I've recently been exploring the possibilities of squares and rectangles and simple one-patch quilts in my quiltmaking.

I might do a "thousand pyramids" quilt next (another one patch but with equilateral triangles arranged in lights and darks so you have the small triangles appearing to form larger triangles).

As beautiful as the appliqued quilts, or the ones with all the fiddly little points, are, I have to admit that I love the simple one-patch quilts, and quilts made of simple geometric shapes. My quilts may never win ribbons anywhere (even if I entered them!) but I enjoy making them and the finished product is pleasing and useful to me.

I probably enjoy making my "plain rectangle" quilts more than I would enjoy making Mariner's Compass or suchlike. I'd probably spend a lot of time cussing over things like getting the points right on Mariner's Compass, and I quilt to relax, not to make myself tense and cussy.

Here's a closeup:



I found as I was getting towards the end that I was going to run short of pieces, partly due to a couple of cutting mistakes (and also to one fabric company - who shall remain nameless - WASTING a lot of fabric space with giant white margins that go way beyond the selvedge). So, in the spirit of Use what you Have month, and also in the spirit of "I really would love to get this done today," I dug out a piece of the chocolate-print fabric that was left from my chocolate brown and pink quilt. I think it blends well.

I'm still contemplating a backing; I have a 2 1/2 yard piece of fabric from the same line as most of the other fabrics. But to use that as a back would require it to be pieced onto something else, and I'm kind of done with pieced quilt backs for now. It seems like I always forget how much fabric the seams take up, or I cut it wrong, and I'm sewing extra pieces and bits on to make it big enough.

I do have two large (4 yard) pieces that were both purchased on clearance somewhere - one is an orchid print, and the other is from that "National Parks" line and features a scenic print of the Everglades. I think on either one the colors would work, so I'll have to pull each out and see how it looks as a back. (I also have another large "clearance" piece of peach-blossom print, but I'm kind of sort of saving that for something else).

I think I am going to have this one quilted with the thinnest cotton batting Mary has and use it as a summer coverlet to go over my legs and feet. In the summer, I usually don't need a quilt - it's so warm and humid that a sheet is all I can stand. But sometimes my feet get chilly. And there's also something reassuring to me about the weight of a quilt - somehow I don't sleep as well in the summer when there's just a light sheet on top of me, and it's always a welcome feeling in the fall when I can put the "real" quilt back on the bed.

(* Edited to add: It occurs to me now that there might be a reason behind my fondness for listening to baseball on the radio. Back when I bought this house - I purchased it on Sept. 13, 2001, two days after the attacks - I had a lot of minor renovations to do. I'd come over here in the evenings after I got done teaching, and strip off old paint, or pull out old carpet. And the only companion I had in that was a little radio, and pretty much only the AM stations came in. My choices were the "Top 40" version of country (Nashville Pop), or some rather forceful relgious broadcasters, or the usual political ranting, or baseball. So I chose baseball. And I wonder if maybe that was the best thing for me, even though I didn't know it then, during that upheaved and frightening time, to listen to something quiet and slow-paced and traditional and linking me to a grandfather I never knew**. And I wonder if somehow I now associate the sound of the announcers with reassurance that the world is still here, despite everything, and that things will somehow be okay. And I can see myself, in my memory, sitting in the fading fall light, scraping latex paint (painted over oil!) on the miles of trim in my house, with the Rangers playing on my little radio, and no bad news from the outside world intruding on my quiet and hardwon sense of safety...

**my mother says that after he retired from work, one of her father's favorite summer pastimes was to sit in the living room in the evening, with a bottle of pop or beer, and listen to the baseball games on the radio.)