Saturday, March 28, 2020

Life as we know it

My county is under a stay-at-home directive (city parks are still open and walking in neighborhoods is still permitted, as are essential shopping trips, although the 6-foot rule is in place; no gatherings of more than 10 people and an 11 pm-5 am curfew). I've been working from home for the past week. Most of the other employees in my office are also. At first I thought it might be a good opportunity to take a little leave--maybe only work half-days, and get some good uninterrupted time in on a few work projects that need 3-4 hours straight of good concentration time to make progress. Yeah, not so much. I managed to "only" work 37.5 hours this week (but I am still over my scheduled hours for the month so far), and was on the phone or in various teleconferences several hours every day, so no dedicated project-time. I rotate between a portable laptop desk on casters in my quilt studio and the living room sofa. No time to get to special home projects (everyone on social media seems to be cleaning the attic and/or tearing every shrub out of their yard). No extra quilting time, although I did cut the background diamonds and triangles and get my String Star quilt up on the design wall last weekend (I am not scheduled to work weekends, so I try not to).



I cut the freezer paper foundation patterns in January 2019 and sewed the strings to them over the course of 2019 and early 2020--I got most of them sewn over the holidays and in January of this year. All that is left is the final quit top assembly, since all the blocks have been made. I got 4 rows sewn together last weekend and 4 rows sewn in the evenings during the week.

And no, this hasn't even made a dent in my scrap collection.

Saturday, March 14, 2020

Corona Quilting

In the midst of all the uncertainty surrounding the Coronavirus, I've been doing much more reading than quilting. Not that there's really any connection, but that is just what I'm up to lately. I have had the same scrappy quilt up on the design wall for the past five months, and progress has been slow. I built some string blocks of 60-degree diamonds and triangles, but I can't start laying that one out until I finish the top on the design wall. I finally got inspired to pull some fabrics for a new quilt, but haven't settled on a pattern yet. I've been in a very neutral-color mood. So here is some virtual quilting inspired by the Coronavirus craziness.


Coronaviruses get their name from the club-shaped protein spikes that cover the surface of the virus particles. The Latin root of corona means "crown" or "halo" or "wreath." So I've been searching through Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns for blocks with a crown theme and drafting blocks in EQ7. The quilt above includes block '2048-Memory Wreath/Crown of Thorns' and block '2169-Coronation/Free Trade.'

I went to the grocery store today. The shelves in the toilet paper aisle were bare. They have cancelled all work-related travel for the next 30 days. We are reviewing employees' digital needs in case we all need to work from home (who doesn't have a work laptop? Who doesn't have wifi access at home?) and three people in our workgroup are already working from home due to having traveled internationally or having a family member that traveled somewhere or had contact with someone who traveled to a city where people had the virus. We don't know if it will mostly pass us by, or get worse. So in the meantime, I am designing digital quilts.