Spinning straw into gold

Just because I'm not blogging, doesn't mean I'm not busy. But it might very well mean that I'm not busy with the handwork I like most. Last weekend we went on a little trip to watch my niece Sarah perform in her school play. It was an excellent performance; Sarah seems a natural on the stage. But the 3-hour trip, although planned for weeks, caught me unprepared knitting-wise. I was simply at a loss for some good car knitting. There are uncompleted projects aplenty, but nothing that could be easily packed and ready to go with little or no attention to pattern details. By the time the return 3-hour trip was completed, I was really gnawing for some undemanding handwork. (I hesitate to use the term "mindless work" because I find it demeaning. But traveling work cannot be demanding, or it interferes with the scenery and pauses for conversation and Garrison Keillor and the like.) Lucky for me, I had a quilt to bind when we got home.
Remember the gold quilt that gave me problems a few weeks ago? Well, I bit the bullet, put it all together, and took it to be quilted. Yolanda, the longarm (not her ... the machine) quilter I rely on, listened and questioned and listened some more when I explained how I envisioned the quilting. In the end, I decided it was wiser to acquiesce to her vast experience and left the quilting to her judgment. She did a marvelous job. She always does. The quilting emphasizes the diamonds created by the seam lines in the monochrome quilt, just as I requested. Much to my surprise, stars appeared on the finished quilt top. I explained that I didn't want those to appear prominent; rather, since they were unintentional, I wanted them to remain as little surprise discoveries among the diamonds.
I bound the quilt in a red and metallic gold plaid, which acts as an outline of the golds against the wall. I am pleased with the results, even though I question whether the red should have more of a cherry red. But I can't obsess over everything or nothing would ever get done. One of my favorite quotes -- I will put it in embroidery some day -- is "To be creative you must lose the fear of being wrong." That's what I need to remember when getting caught up in the right or wrong of a quilt or knitting or whatever else. What is important is that I enjoyed making the project -- whatever it is. And I did enjoy this tremendously.
Evan helped me hang the quilt tonight. Insufficient light and skill did not stop me from taking this picture. The quilt is, in my opinion, a soft background for the spinning wheel. As Evan said, "it's nice the way everything blends together." Admittedly, my goal was not to have everything blend together. But seeing my golden diamonds as the backdrop for the spinning wheel makes me smile. The 72-inch square softens the wall behind the spinning wheel whose only real use is to be dusted, but I've always loved it and making this quilted stage for it brought back memories of pretending I was the captain of some ancient vessel sailing across the seas, or the famous miller who could spin straw into gold, or the inventor of the world's next greatest ferris wheel, or even the original owner who actually knew how to spin wool into yarn. All that imagining carried me through many Saturday dusting mornings. The imaginings of a monochrome quilt whose pattern is determined by seam line rather than color carried me through many hours at the sewing machine. Seeing both the source and the results of all that imagining together in my living room gives me great pleasure indeed.