Progress ... indoors and out.

No peeking Jon ... come back in a week!

Yes, I have actually kept myself on task. 

The advent calendar made lots of progress once I got serious. After all, it needs to reach the states by the beginning of December to be much use. 

I really should have started sooner. Have I noted that lesson? We shall see.

Last week I used time at meetings ad on the train to sew those fiddly numbers on to the pockets, line the pockets, and quilt the numbers.

I wasted a lot of time hunting for fabric I "thought" I had left from last year. It was a piney-looking print in a more yellowish green. I finally did find some but it wasn't as much as I had expected. I guess that is good because it may mean I am using up stash faster than I thought.

I went back to the green bin and found a few large pieces of green prints to try. This is the candidate I selected and it looks fine now that the hooks and yellow balls are in place.

I found a dark green star print that tends to fade in the sun but worked well for the backing. Now the binding is all sewed on and I have turned it half way. I think the train ride to choir practice will be just the right amount of time to finish it up. 

The wooden pieces are all cut and I have begun to whittle the details. That is a messy job but the floor is covered in dog hair anyway so I may as well sweep up wood chips at the same time when I clean. This weekend we will have a bit of family time. Our family blog has been filled with wonderful pictures of the west-coast gang and two east-coast siblings. Now it will be our turn for a photo op. (but sometime before then I will have to clear some space to sit) 

I love the toad lilies along my back walk.  They have somehow survived with less sun that they were getting at our last house. These were rescued one day when a house in the neighborhood was torn down. I had been enjoying them along the street for years, and when I saw the bulldozers turning the area into a parking lot, I went home and got my trowel and a bag and went back. I dug along the border where I knew those roots were, and ssure enough, was able to rescue a good bit... some of which went off to my daughter's house. I suppose even a dark garden is better than rocks and gravel.

The Biwi tree is full of promise in the bud.

Last year there were several bud clusters but this year almost every limb has a bug clump.

This tree is growing out of a very small pot tipped on its side and I have had to trim it regularly because the leaves are big and leathery and I don't want them to annoy the neighbor to the south. Some people consider this a "junk tree" . This one is only six or seven years old and I don't want it to get out of control.

 A few nights with temperatures hovering around 2 c, got the attention of the maples. Now we are getting a bit of color outside the gate.

Three kinds of maple, and all are showing color.

The Enkianthus is turning dark red as well.

The pavement is brown from dirt washing in from the construction site every time it rains.

And, up in my little greenhouse - laundry room - bedroom, the step-tansu  is decorated with a cute little yellow flower on one of the succulents and just peeking out from among the leaves in the plant behind you might be able to spot two red spiky flowers on this strange orchid... it's second year to bloom. I also notice buds on the Christmas cactus.

I have also been surprised to see that without doing anything, my picture arrangement has returned to left and right display. Maybe the computer thought it had given me enough frustration for one post. Am I happy? you bet! Happy with the progress, happy with the blooms and colors, and happy with my laptop.

Satisfied.

The fall runner is finished and ready to mail.
Although there was some advice to un-sew and add more rows of leaves, and I did seriously consider that option, I am not unhappy with the way it turned out.

It would have been possible to do the un-sewing but there was no guarantee that the added leaves would look better since this is a pattern where the arrangement can not be decided by just two, or in this case, three rows but especially when repeating fabrics as I would have to have done. My quilt group liked the result and I am sure my darling daughter will say she loves it, as she has the first two.

One interesting thing that happened makes me wonder if this change of plans was really a mistake. As I came to quilt the end pieces, I found the space was just right to quilt the words from Ecclesiastes, "To every thing there is a season, (and) a time for every purpose under heaven.." As I finished quilting the phrase and added the binding I felt that maybe what I had thought to be a mistake was just an opportunity for something else if only I could keep my mind tuned to higher things than always being in control.

My number three daughter states this would also be a good runner idea in shades of green. At this point I am wondering how my sister managed to make a whole quilt using this pattern. Although I had stated I would never do this pattern again, never is a LOOOOOONG time!

The flowers on the Mother-in-law's tongue, (or any of the other names this plant goes by as certainly my own mother-in-law was the kindest most loving mother one might wish for) have begun to open. Green on green is not so flashy but they are lacy and charming. They also look like they are sweating in the Tokyo heat.

One more plant has blessed us with a flower. When we lived in Suginami Ward, my neighbor across the street had a huge prickly pear cactus on his front porch and every year it was covered with blooms. At one point I asked Morishita-san if, when he was pruning that cactus, he might give me a piece to root. Better than that, one day before we moved, he turned up at my door carrying a pot and plant he had already rooted. I now have several offspring of that plant. (I can't seem to throw away the pieces that accidentally get broken off) The plant sits up on my balcony all year but since this winter was particularly cold, I brought it inside for a few months. It still gets to freezing many nights but it seemed a bit happier than the year before. Now, for the first time, I have been rewarded with this lovely flower. Friday I shall return to my old neighborhood and I plan to take a picture to my friend and thank him again.

When the brain takes a vacation

OOPS!!

I was so happy to add that last leaf to the fall runner. Tomorrow is my quilt group meeting and I will have a small piece all basted and ready to begin quilting.

Dig out some backing ... plenty to choose from ...

Whole roll of batting to cut ... no problem there,

lay it all out to prepare for basting ... Find the measure to check that it is straight ...

Huh?

The width is right but the length is supposed to be 38 inches. It is six inches too short!

Get out the notebook with the plan to check. Yep, no problem there. I remember how pleased I was to come up with a design that just fit the dimensions but ... oh no, I left off two rows of leaves.

Now, what?

Well, I could leave it as is and just quilt it ... but it would be the wrong size. Or ... I could un-sew the last two rows and add ten more leaves ... but I have done more than enough un-sewing already. Or ... I could just add two borders on the ends ... I have lots of leaf prints.

So I auditioned a few and this maple leaf print in fall colors seemed to fit, but I thought of my blogging friends and wondered what they would do.

Am I the only one who makes this kind of mistake? Does your brain ever melt down in the heat of summer? Can you think of another "plan B" ... or maybe "C" or "D". Ah well, "The best laid plans of mice and men ..." Perhaps the more mistakes one makes, the better one gets at fixing them.

Finished Fall Runner

I haven't figured out how to get these pictures arranged on the page but here they are as the computer wants them!

Quilting tomorrow

Tomorrow my quilt group meets here. Time to make a dessert and de-dog-hair the house.

At least I have a project to work on. The quilted leaves in each diamond are rather labor intensive but I like the result.

Vines and leaves have been added and the top is finished! I have been giving the backing some thought. My friend gives English commentary for Kabuki ear-phone-guide. Her husband comes from a samurai family. I have decided to use traditional tenugui and piece them together .

I have collected some Kabuki ones and some of the traditional family crests. I know I have a few of the designs that suggest long life and happiness.

Today was not the day to hunt through my collection as I was awakened in the wee hours with a call to teach, going in for a teacher who was out for the day. What fun to spend a whole day with kids and although the weather in Tokyo is still quite hot there was a nice breeze blowing through the downtown area. Tomorrow is a holiday ... autumnal equinox ... and a good day to begin the challenge of reverse-side planning.

My quilt group = my inspiration

The Tokyo International Quilters is really the collected remnants of assorted quilt groups. When you live in a place like Tokyo, you say good-bye, it seems, more than you say hello and we have said plenty of good-byes. Still a small core of avid quilters remains and we meet every-other-Friday at one of the member's homes and enjoy quilting, fellowship, obento, and dessert.

Yesterday I arrived a bit late and found, to my extreme joy, a very special visitor ...a kindred spirit, really... I had not seen in months. It was all I could do to tear myself away at the end of the afternoon.

I will need to buy more green thread to finish sewing the leaves but I spent the time sewing a two-inch border outside the bear paw blocks. I think this not only brings a bit of the orange and yellow to the edge but helps to control those bears who were flexing their seems and behaving like twelve and a half wannabes.

Friday is my quilt group meeting. I need something to work on and just the project to meet that need. Over a year ago I was in the wedding party of a very dear friend, a fellow Scouter. She was marrying another fellow Scouter and both were members of a Woodbadge Bear patrol.

I decided a Bear Paw quilt would be the perfect gift but nothing this big is made by hand in such a short time. I drew up a plan on graph paper and marked out leaf shapes on assorted green scraps. Those I took to the wedding and asked guests to sign them with names and wishes.

After finding out my friend and especially her new husband liked earth tones, I pulled out my collection of greens and browns and cut out the pieces for 24 12in. bear paw blocks... light on dark and dark on light. Imagine having a stash that big! It hardly made a dent.

After the border blocks were finished I drew up a template for the lone star. All the patterns I had in books were for machine piecing so this was a bit taxing to my non-math brain. Now star and inner borders are done and today I finished sewing the blocks around the outer edge. Now it is time to applique the vine and leaves. (I probably should have done this before assembly but I wanted more control over the final placement) Meanwhile, I have enough of the leaf print fabric to add a small border to the outer edge. I am already wondering where I will ever find floor space big enough to lay this out for basting.

Autumn Breeze 2005