Quilting Home

 

Finally I can reveal the queen-size wedding quilt I’ve been consumed with the past four months! This log-cabin block quilt was created for my very dear friends & power couple, actress Harmony Stempel and painter Samuel Wade Levy. Why a log-cabin block? Because with a log-cabin quilt, you’re always home.

 

 

Starting a new quilt is the perfect excuse to fuss about in a number of wonderful fabric stores. The rich red-palette linen fabrics that served as the basis of the quilt were found in a bundle at Purl Soho. Other fabric and thread sourced from The City Quilter and Brooklyn General Store. My hidden talent of”Jess Math” has ensured I have plenty of leftover fabric. Many thanks to fellow Brooklyn quilter Alex Shaw for her fabric insights! Oh & a shout-out to my quilt-spiration:  Blue Elephant Stitches’ Country Quilt.

This cabin quilt was machine-sewn together, but the quilting was done by hand. I’m always so worried about bindings, but this Craftsy tutorial for a string binding has worked really well the past two quilts. As for squaring up the quilt (especially a large quilt like this one), I relied on The Craft Gemini tutorial. Getting my cat to not lovingly destroy my quilt creations? Still mission impossible.

I have a special place in my heart for all my quilts, but I think this quilt is my new favorite. (Although I still love that Civil War Love Letter / Flying Geese quilt I made a few years back in Maine…)

And a Jack Gilbert poem for H + S’s autumnal honeymoon & all the years to come…

Half the Truth

The birds do not sing in these mornings. The skies
are white all day. The Canadian geese fly over
high up in the moonlight with the lonely sound
of their discontent. Going south. Now the rains
and soon the snow. The black trees are leafless,
the flowers gone. Only cabbages are left
in the bedraggled garden. Truth becomes visible,
the architecture of the soul begins to show through.
God has put off his panoply and is at home with us.
We are returned to what lay beneath the beauty.
We have resumed our lives. There is no hurry now.
We make love without rushing and find ourselves
afterward with someone we know well. Time to be
what we are getting ready to be next. This loving,
this relishing, our gladness, this being puts down
roots and comes back again year after year.

(From Gilbert’s must-read book, The Great Fires)