Lessons

I wrote this a couple of days ago:

In the last couple of days, I near-finished my Shadow Quilt. 

I started the quilt in early 2017 with fabric that I bought on super sale online and which turned out to be of very poor quality when it arrived. It was a good thing, though, because I wasn't afraid to hack it up and sew it back together. I pieced a twin-bed sized quilt top and then I folded it up and put it away. In early 2020, I pulled it out and hacked it up again, into smaller pieces, about 12 of them, and started to add applique shadow figures to it, a process I liked. I quilted the pieces willy nilly with my usual foot (I had a quilting foot, but didn't really know how to use it and was just keeping it in a box).

I was going to sash it back together but then thought about binding each piece and sewing the binding together. I did two of the pieces and then stalled, hating it, so I put it away again. Besides, I was running low on the black fabric I was using (Moda Bella black) and the pandemic made acquiring more impossible. The quilt shop where I usually shop started carrying a different black, closer to a Kona cotton and it had a different weight and sheen to it. (You'd think that black is black, but you'd be wrong. The eye very easily picks up on such differences and I knew I didn't want to live with that.) (Yes, I'm spoiled that way.)

I pulled it out a few days ago and finished the binding of nearly all the pieces. Of course I ran out of the black fabric with three pieces remaining to be bound. I ordered three more yards of the Moda Bella black to be shipped from a place in Missouri (with pandemic shipping time of 2-3 weeks). But I was reluctant to but it away again (who knows if it would take another year or three to get back to it), I sewed what I had finished together, deciding that if that was my quilt, then that was my quilt. 

Still waiting for the black fabric to arrive. But the quilt is a good one, I think. 

I am writing this now:

Last night I finished a second quilt, this one started in the fall (?) of last year, so it only took about five months. It's a smaller quilt, throw sized, made of crumb blocks (blocks sewn out of small scraps that would otherwise get thrown away because they're too small and incohesive to use in other, larger projects) that are bordered with various hues of solid green fabric. It's the first large-ish tied quilt I've made (I made a small, cat-sized quilt for Gray Kitty that I tied). 

In other news:

On Friday I got my second Covid vaccine shot (Moderna). My arm is sore. Very sore. And I've had intermittent headaches since yesterday afternoon. I also slept most of the day away after getting the shot in the morning. (All of that could also be due to stress, could be the screwed up sleep schedule I'm living with now, could be hormonal, could be the storm that's moving through the area right now.) Anecdotally, people respond relatively well to the second Moderna shot (meaning fewer side effects with the second shot versus the first). Hopefully it stays that way. 

I don't write about Covid much these days, because it is just another inexorable grind. Even vaccinated, I will still social distance and wear a mask and do all the things I'm supposed to do, because it is still possible for me to get Covid and to transmit it to others. 

And I anticipate that we'll be doing all this again next year.