Patchwork Thursday

Yesterday was Thursday and I had a great day with my patchwork friends. Mrs. Harada came in from where she has moved (a three hour drive) and it seemed like she had never left the neighborhood. I think she has come to every patchwork gathering that we've had since she moved (and I missed the last one while I was in the States) and I guess she really must miss us all.

While I was in California the group got together and basted the bazaar quilt after first consulting me by e-mail and pictures about the backing. A lovely, soft backing was chosen (and met with my approval) and the quilt was basted and handed on to Mrs. Harada who has spent the month hand quilting it. She's finished nearly a third of the quilt! Everything is being quilted in Stitch-in-the-ditch and if there is time and the inclination we may go back and do X's in the leaders/enders lattice. Isn't this a fun quilt! The quilting really makes it shine and we can't wait to unveil it at the bazaar in October.

Mrs. Ochiai brought her flimsy for us to help baste and the six of us made quick work of that job too. Mrs. Ochiai started and finished this quilt while I was in the States but she was a bit surprised at how Ainu Indian looking this is turning out to be (Ainu are a nearly vanished race of Indian in northern Japan.) She was hoping for a more modern look so she has drawn bull's eyes randomly on the flimsy in hopes of changing the image a bit. We all teased her because she was wondering about what color thread to quilt with.

"Red! Quilt it in red!"

"No, quilt it in yellow. Bright canary yellow!"

"How about in all colors of the rainbow! A different color for each bull's eye!"

I don't think Mrs. Ochiai is quite that adventuresome and she was mumbling something about gray which we all claimed would look too much like the pencil lines she'd drawn. It's her quilt and she can do what she likes with it. Wonder what color she'll choose...

I guess I was just fooling around on my 365 Challenge and since no one had ever seen it before I brought it with me to share. More than beautiful, everyone was surprised that I could keep up with the everyday entries and Mrs. Furui (who can read English) was crawling around on it reading about some of my days. Made me think I might not want people to read my inner thoughts before they go to sleep under it someday, but probably I never recorded anything too profound. I am not ready to re-read it myself for awhile!

Ooh. The lights just went out in the house since we are in a major thunder storm. I got back from the next city just as it started and barely got Choco in the house before the deluge began. I had already remembered to unplug the computer (don't want the wires fried) and I'm happy to be able to blog on charged batteries for awhile.

Do I dare get out the sewing machine. Don't want to fry those wires either and it doesn't run on batteries!