Finished - sort of...

This is the front of the Underground Railroad quilt with the zig-zagged border I put at the top. I might add another border around the other sides but have to have it ready by Saturday.

Putting it all together...

I decided to make the blocks akimbo and use stripes for the background, but then I went wild and added a border of bright green, which I love but sister Lisa says is overkill. I realize that I'm ALL about overkill, which has been my main problem forEVER. And so, here are the beginnings of overkill quilting. These are 9 of the blocks with "overkill" - hey, it beats roadkill - and tonight is our last class, so I shall lug in the blocks and see what Sarah has to say/suggest. She suggested the stripes, and I LOVE the fabric I found online. I went back online yesterday (obviously, I was avoiding grading essays) and spent over $50 on fabrics; I get so excited to piece textiles together! It is as good as writing a good analysis of a text, quilting quotations together and stitching the analysis into athe stuff of academia. Fabric quilting is much more tactilely satisfying. For the time being, that is...

Stars

My heart is heavy tonight, and I've got lots to read and digest. This I made today - North Star, which I botched up with my attempt to jazz it up in the middle; I meant for it to be checkered, but I went too quickly and ended up with two purple gingham strips instead of checkered patterns. Oh, well. I will try another tomorrow before class. This one if Friendship Star, and I like the patterns better, but I don't feel full of stars and swirls and swoops tonight. Even though these are my second to last blocks, I don't feel much like celebrating this quilt and probably would be better off in bed getting done my work to prepare for classes tomorrow. I will confess that this blue fabric with the stars and cinnamin bun swirls gives me a lift and makes me feel the world is a good place. And I'm in this world where there is joy and pleasure and love; how can I ever feel sorrow or loss?

Another drunkard?

It seems particularly fitting that tonight I went to see Where the Wild Things Are, wept copiously, as is my usual response to things of that ilk, came home and had a beer with friend Gabriella. THEN, I made my second drunkard's path, and I'm feeling rather full of myself for being able to do it without more than one ripped out seam - AFTER drinking a beer. Hmmm... does this establish a new precedent? I rather doubt it, but it's good to know that I cold handle it. I like the way the blues came out - two different fabrics, but I'm not crazy about the yellow and black specks on the background. Only four more blocks this weekend, and then I'm done! It is unbelievable to me what we can do when we have deadlines. Don't I wish my students felt the same way!!

Drunkard's Path?

I skipped a meeting today and finished this Drunkard's Path. Do I feel guilty? You BET I do, but I wonder if I would have been able to complete this whirling mass of circular seams had I not been really, really naughty and given myself some quiet time where I could focus and stitch. I'll bet the plagiarism policy is going to turn out better without me at the meeting; I am all about making the statement simply this: plagiarism is presenting anyone else's written, auditory, visual or cooked material as your own. I added the "cooked" in there because I think it holds that if I present as my own the cooking of someone else, and I do not acknowledge that person, I have been plagiarizing. It is just as dishonest as any of the others, and, I might add, doing the same thing with textiles represents another form of plagiarism, but once you put it succinctly as "anyone else's material," you've realy covered it. If instead we try to detail EVERY possible form of plagiarism, inevitably, there will be a loophole. So, did I make this myself? DAMN straight I did! And it is one complex sucker, but I can help anyone who is the slightest bit interested in this block, now that I've done it once. Ha, that is MY idea of mastery. Hey, my seams match!

Flying to finish Flying Geese

One of my African American Literature students has a grand plan to create a quilt based loosely on some of the narratives we have read this term; her proposal sounds so clever but so involved that I doubt she can get it all done by the end of the term. I offered to work on it with her, but she has a bee in her bonnet and plans pulse in her brain. I can't wait to see how it turns out. Her ideas and imagine make these Flying Geese blocks, also called Dutchman's Puzzle (what the "Dutchman" had to do with the Underground Railroad is beyond me) looked like mere folderol!

I have my class tomorrow night, and I've been grading essays all day but promised myself one hour to put these two blocks together; they don't really make my heart thump with pleasure, but it is a style, after all, and it goes into the Underground Railroad motif for some reason or another. I must get the poem that implicates all thes designs; maybe if I put it into this blog, the blocks will make more sense.

Double wedding ring is tricky,

but I think I'm getting it now; I even had a beer tonight before I began putting it together. I confess that I was really, really careful, keeping the cut pieces set up the way they ought to go to form the rings, checking each time I stitched a seam; however, I am not going to cut the block until I get to class on Monday. Sarah Bond tells us that we should wait to drink a glass of wine until after we finish the block, but I think I will have to tell her that just one bottle on Blue Moon seems to do the trick. But doesn't a beer always do the trick?