Autumn Leaves

Over twenty years ago while walking in town I saw red-orange leaves against the clear blue autumn sky. The image stuck in my head. About fifteen years ago I taught a continuing adult education class on "old fashioned" quilting, and made Maple Leaf blocks to demonstrate hand sewing quilt blocks.

And it came to me to use those pieced blocks with the image of those leaves to make a quilt.

I used all hand dyed fabrics, some purchased and some which I had dyed. The quilt is hand appliqued and hand quilted with a 'curlicue' design.

The branches in the central panel are knotted in places. I used bleach to remove color from the central leaves, and made dots with a Pigma permanent marker for shadowing.

Fall was always my favorite time of year. I loved the colors and the cool weather.

Now I am older, it makes me think of the coming winter, the cold, and the long sunless days until spring.

Ogemaw County Quilt Trail

On our last day of our trip Up North we visited several barns on the Ogemaw County Quilt Trail. Fifteen county barns display a quilt block.

The first one we discovered while driving from West Branch to my brother's cabin. The Zettle barn has a block with a cat on it.

 Several days later we were looking to get a nice photo of the Smiley face water tower, voted the #1 favorite sight on the I-75 drive Up North by Detroit Free Press readers this summer. That is how we found quilt block two.

 The third quilt block was not far away.

There is a map available at the city hall showing how to find all the barns.

A favorite shop that sold reproduction fabrics has decided to discontinue stocking fabrics! I had to take advantage of the 25% discount. I also visited Caroline's Sewing Room. I bought reproduction wide backing fabric for my Charles Dickens quilt. I have one more quilting session and I will have finally quilted my "Green Heroes" quilt!!! Whoopee! And Dickens is next in line.

While walking our doggies I twice saw an otter along the roadside and watched it slink into a culvert that diverts a creek under the road. In the other direction the creek goes down a waterfalls. As it rained quite hard several days the water's rush was very loud. We were told that a neighbor has caught salmon in this creek!

Now we are back home that To-Do List is being addressed again. This week we are painting the hallway, including inside the linen closet and installing a new LED ceiling light fixture. It was nice to spend a week away with no to-do list, no television, no Internet (except at the library!), and plenty of time to read.

Needing something completely different, I decided to read The Good Luck of Right Now, a novel by Matthew Quick, author of The Silver Linings Playbook which I read some months ago.

"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." The Dalai Lama

Certainly there have been better actors than me who have had no careers. Why? I don't know. Richard Gere

These epigraphs appear in the front of the book. The teachings of the Dalai Lama and the career of Richard Gere are of great interest to the novel's narrator, Bartholomew Neil. Bartholomew is at once a prodigy and philosopher and an outsider and innocent in the tradition of The Idiot or Being There.

Bartholomew's mother has died of cancer and at 38 years of age he must learn to face life without his best friend and guide and caretaker. He has no idea how the bills are paid or what he will do with his life now. He has never asked a girl out on a date and his only friend is the bi-polar Father McNamee. He has a crush on the 'Girlbrarian', a volunteer at the local library but the little man in his stomach yells that he is too ugly and stupid to attract any girl.

The novel is told in a series of letters that Bartholomew writes to Richard Gere, his mother's favorite movie actor. In her final days she called her son "Richard." Thinking that his mother believed he was Richard Gere he assumed Gere's identify for her sake.

After the funeral Father NcNamee 'defrocks' himself and moves in with Bartholomew, insisting they have a mission. A grief counselor, Wendy, arranges for Bartholomew to meet Max who is deep in grief over the loss of his cat, and whose sister happens to be the 'Girlbrarian'-- Synchronicity, Bartholomew thinks.

Wild and wacky, deep and moving, Quick probes the deep questions of the universe as Bartholomew grapples with "the good luck of right now," his mother's belief that one person's bad luck is another person's good luck as the universe seeks balance.

Harper
Published 2/11/2014
$25.99
ISBN: 978006225539, ISBN 10: 006228553X

The High Divide by Lin Enger

Ulysses Pope has been baptized. He believes in prevenient grace and in God's eternal love and forgiveness. But he can not forgive himself and he goes on a quest to seek expiation. He screws up his courage and abandons his beloved wife and their two sons and journeys into the past, across the northern prairie to the High Divide, the rugged country between the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers.

The Pope family live in Sloan's Crossing, Minnesota. Ulysses fought in the Civil War and was mustered out in 1866. What his wife Gretta does not know is that he reenlisted in '67 with the Calvary in Indian Territories, mustering out again in '69. He is obsessed by what happened. Gretta is a woman of strength and courage who left her native Denmark for America. As an abandoned woman she is prey to gossip and the power of the man who owns her home. Son Eli is on the verge of manhood, full of questions which only his father can answer. He sets off to trail his father. Younger brother Danny is prey to debilitating headaches and visions, but won't be left behind. Each faces a physical and psychological journey that entails danger and doubt, and tests their courage and love for each other.

Lin's descriptive language is poetic, and he limns dialogue with a verbal sparseness that speaks volumes. Each character has depth and clarity. The book addresses the great American themes of the dying West and the awful holocaust of Native American policy

The story is a journey quest story with a character nearly Biblical.

Can one atone for one's sins and live free again, face one's family without shame? Can one find a new baptism and rebirth and live again?

http://algonquin.com/book/the-high-divide/

The High Divide

by Lin Enger

Algonquin Books

Publication September 23, 2014

ISBN: 978-1-61620-375-7

$24.95

30th Annual West Branch Quilt Walk

Yesterday I was finally able to see the West Branch Quilt Walk, established 30 years ago by quilters wanting to raise money for the area's first Hospice care. I learned that it will also be the last one. The founders are getting up in years, and there are not enough younger folk willing to take on the project. A story too often told.

West Branch, MI is near the Ogemaw hills, Up North by Troll standards but a mere two and a half hours from Metro Detroit. It calls itself a Victorian town, and there are some lovely Victorian homes and buildings.

The quilts are displayed in various venues throughout town, from the library and city hall to the antique malls and even the jewelry store and wine store.

Some of my favorites were the Redwork quilts. This was a pre-printed panel beautifully embroidered and hand quilted.

A Redwork Sampler included patterns of all vintages.

 Embroidered, Pieced and Quilted by the Rifle River Quilt Guild

Botanical Redwork, Owned, Pieced and Quilted by Barb MacDonald of Oscoda.

A cute bluework featured a tea theme.

 Tea Party Time by Barb MacDonald, Oscoda

There were some lovely applique quilts as well.

 Pieced and owned by Barb MacDonald and quilter by Nancy Webster

 I loved this Sunbonnet Sue Sampler Owned, Pieced and Quilted by Beverly Baumgart, Alger and the The Pink Ladies Group.

It was a nice surprise to see some art quilts as well; by Joan Berg-Rezmer of Gladwin.

A lovely portrait of her husband by Cindy HeitMuller was quilted and thread work embellished by Jan Berg-Rezmer.

Vintage quilt tops pieced in the 1970s by Anna Baylis were quilted by Kathy Curtis and owned by Karen Beyerlein of Lupton.

 

And of course pieced quilts abounded. This pattern was one I also made, a late 1990s pattern from a quilt magazine.

 I'm a sucker for pansies.

Pieced and quilted by Treva Meyers, Clarksville MI 

and bought in 1984 by Terry Boyce of Rose City.

Another Barb MacDonald quilt showing great fussing cutting. Hot Flashes was all hand sewn.

 An amazing paper pieced work by Gerald Brauer of Greenbush.

Some lucky quilts were displayed on beds in a furniture store, like this Edyta Sitar umbrella pattern by Barb MacDonald.

 A state star sampler was huge.

So glad I had a chance to see this show, even if it is the last one. There is hope that reorganization and new leadership will birth a new show in the future.