Fourth Fan

Sharon's 100 details series is winding down. I can't believe she's in the 90s already. I've pretty much finished my fourth fan. The blade with the dragonflies is provisional. I'm saving that space for one or two last seam treatments, and I'll probably wait until the end of the series to decide what to put there. I really appreciate Sharon's generousity and inspiration. Crazy quilting isn't something I'd ever anticipated trying my hand at, but it's been fun.


In this photo, from left to right, is rick-rack with wheatear stitch and beads, herringbone stitch with detached chains and buttons, and fern stitch with buttons and French knots.

I showed the stitches on the left here before, but I added a crazy composition on the right: ribbon, beads, straight stitches and buttons.
In the open areas that are left, I'm going to do motifs. I found the Rosetta Stone of crazy quilting: Carole Samples's Treasury of Crazy Quilt Stitches, a wonderful book. There are no instructions, but there are hundreds of stitches organized by type, as well as a selection of various kinds of motifs. I'm looking forward to finishing this project.

Okay, Now I'm Old

I'm still using my 49th year, and I got my invitation to join AARP, the big senior citizens lobby. To underscore the point, my baby turned 16. I remember him when he a a sweet chubby-cheeked baby, and now he's a hard-edged local rock star. Here's a clipping from a newspaper story about a recent gig. I was cool at one time, now I'm cool's mom.

That's my baby with the microphone.



I had a wonderful time at my Labor Day reunion with my circle of college girlfriends. (That's me in the back with the pink blouse.) The years mean nothing when you're with people who shared important times with you. We were undergrads together at a fancy schmancy women's college. Out of a student body of 900, there were never more than 20 Chicana (Mexican American) students there at any one time, so we were drawn together by our common experiences as working class daughters of immigrant parents or grandparents and by our shared experience as first-generation college students. Few people expected us to end up in college in those days, much less at the fancy schmancy women's college, but with each other's support, and with the support of our teachers and mentors (the grayer folks in the photo) we have all done well. We knew the responsibility we bore to our communities as college grads, so many of us work in education as teachers, librarians, or administrators. It's wonderful to realize how stong the bonds of friendship are after all these years.

In the quilting department, I'm working very slowly on my hand embellished crazy quilt. I'm not sure I want to finish it, so I'm not hurrying to work on it right now. I've also been trying to catch up on my journal quilts for this year, and I've "made up" 3 months that I'd not yet done. I wonder if it counts as a journal entry if you do it 3 months late? I'll have pictures soon.