Falling Forward

I had a mini-creative crisis yesterday as I worked around the other Four Seasons Quilt swappers' blogs. I've been crazy busy for the past couple weeks: I went to Chicago (pre-storm) to promote my textbook for the sales reps, finished summer grading, began a yearlong city leadership program, tried to finish an article, wrote my convocation speech (day of!), and kicked off our term; the kids went back to school, including one starting kindergarten, and we planned a back-to-school bash; etc. So, I'd let my little fall quilt sit unattended for some time, and when I zipped around the blogosphere, I saw that many of us seem to have come up with similar quilts. For a while, I started off in a new direction, and then decided I didn't like it and came back to the original plan. Here's where I am now:



I abandoned the border, as it seems I can neither read directions nor measure correctly (which may come from working on projects at 4 am), and my quilt was too big. But, luckily, I realized this after adding the borders (sigh) and found my seam ripper right where I left it--on the floor near the pile of fabric I keep meaning to put back into my stash. (I am so far from being the queen of organization that I have no idea how I accomplish anything.) I went light with the leaves so that they'd show. I was too lazy to find a leaf pattern in a book, since I was so happy to just be sitting in air conditioning after a 3 hour outdoor birthday party in the heat and humidity, so I drew these free-hand. I really liked the results. They aren't as light as this photo suggests, as I'm still learning the iMac photo editing program. They're more golden with a darker gold, tan, and purple leaf pattern, which will be accented with the blanket-stitch that's coming next. I'm thinking of quilting it with the word "fall" as the repeating pattern. Now, on to a whirlwind of cleaning in prep for the "lemonade tea party" coming in a few hours.