I hadn't done any piecing - other than a little hand piecing on the Grandmother's Flower Garden - in quite a while. Part of it is that I had been storing a bunch of junk in my sewing room (it's the room people are least likely to see) and when there's a lot of junk and mess in there, I'm not quite so inclined to go in there and work.

Last week I cleared out about half of the mess, and made it more hospitable. So I finished the cutting of pieces for a "Bento Box" quilt. (There are actually two patterns out there called "Bento Box," I think. This one is sort of like half-Log Cabin blocks).

I was using some fabric I bought over a year ago, some of it being from what purported to be a retro-70s line, though the colors are like none *I* remember from the 70s.

I started sewing blocks yesterday. It's a really fun pattern to do because you do all the cutting at once, then you stack up the fabrics into lights and darks and you can either randomly put fabrics together (which is what I am doing), or you could lay everything out ahead of time on a design wall (or, the floor - which is my "design wall") and have it very planned.

So here are the first six blocks.



Yes. It is kind of bright. I'm not sure but this may be one of my rare mistakes. It's funny, because the fabrics looked so good together in the fat quarters but they begin to fight a little once I sewed them together.

I am trying to reserve judgment on this though; I've had other quilts that didn't look so hot in block form but which settled down nicely once I got the top sewn, or failing that, after it was quilted.

(Actually, I hate the blocks less now than I did, seeing them all lined up together. Maybe things will work out after all).

If I decide it still puts me off after the top's done, I might find someone willing to take it off my hands. Or I might just have it quilted up and finish it and then give it to something like Project Linus - I suspect there MUST be some tween girl somewhere who would find the colors just right.
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Incidentally, I bought one of those one-off Better Homes and Gardens quilt publications yesterday - it's the fall 08 issue of Quilts and More (website here, but 'ware the pop-up ads and the extremely busy site design.)

If you like doing the simpler sort of mostly-rectangle and mostly-square quilts like I do, this issue is a treasure. There are five actual quilts in there I'd like to make, plus a couple other neat projects (there's a pocketed totebag that I'm thinking would be a good general "Christmas gift for female relative or friend") and there are some cute bird decorations that would work on a Christmas tree or hung from a chandelier.

The quilt patterns I particularly like are "I Spy Hallowe'en" (except I'd do it with different fabrics, maybe some of the realistic-flower prints I've collected over the years as the centers of the square-in-squares). And The Main Event - I really, really love that one. I think I actually squealed when I saw it. I think I'd get a "double pink" to use as the main fabric and then dig through my box of Civil War to 1880s reprints to see what goes with it. (I'd probably scale that quilt down - it looks like it's made for a king size bed and would be too large for mine). And In The Meadow is lovely, too...I'm thinking of doing it with the lavender and soft yellow prints I've been saving up, with maybe a shot or two of soft pink added in. Maybe lavender for the centers, and soft yellow and soft green for the strips. Ease Into Autumn and One-Piece Wonder are nice, too, I just haven't envisioned color schemes for them yet. Maybe One Piece Wonder would work for some of the grey and pink 40s reproduction fabrics I bought on my last "big" quilt shop trip. Or it would work with the sort-of-retro American Jane (I have some of the Peas and Carrots line and some of a later line...Look and Learn, I think?)

Almost Irish is a nice enough pattern but I'm having a hard time with the colors...not my favorite combination. Same with High Light.

One thing I'd like to do is start clearing out some of my accumulated fabric (and I have A LOT) by making it up into tops. (I just have to verify that the person who I hired to do quilting in the past is still doing it...) I mean, I have all this fabric I bought because I LOVED it, and it's not doing me much good folded up in a Rubbermaid bin. (And even if I don't LOVE the finished quilt...as I said, there is often someone out there who will love the projects you don't, or there's a charity who will take them and find someone who will love them. If I had a great deal more time, I'd do quilts for Project Linus and other groups).

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Hand quilting also continues. I always forget, when I get away from it, how peaceful it is...it requires a level of concentration over and above what most knitting does for me, so it's a very good activity for calming the mind. There's also something, I don't know, so IMMEDIATE about it...it's just you and the threaded needle (well, and your thimble). And a great deal of the outcome depends on your skill...whereas in knitting, a certain amount of the outcome is influenced by the choice of yarn, and while skill is important, a bad yarn choice can really cover up good skill, whereas a clever yarn choice may be able to camouflage less-even work of someone who's a beginner or whose gauge varies a lot.

I am making an effort to be disciplined and do at least a little hand quilting most days. I'm slowly rebuilding the "callus" that most quilters get on the index finger of the hand that goes under the quilt (in my case, my left hand). (There's a funny scene in one of the old Simpsons episodes concerning that, where Lisa is working on the "family quilt" [which actually seems to be embroidered more than pieced and quilted] and she eventually develops the mighty callus that many hardcore quilters have...)