Turn the page on the calendar... it's been a month.

I'm resisting turning this into a vent site.  I haven't yet figured out if there's a way to block specific eyes from these pages, or if I even want to.  It seems a little disingenuous to give myself a space to be completely honest, and then censor those with whom I share that honesty.  Homework time.

Until this past February, I had a huge drafty, loud sewing studio space that I rented for a song, with the understanding that I'd be turfed with little notice if someone willing to pay market-ish rent appeared.  He did, and I was. :(  A couple of weeks ago I finally picked my pouty lip off the floor and set myself up a space in Tori's old room.  I have a window and a table and a chair and a couple of quilts waiting to be finished.  Now all I need is time and some cooler temps.

This quilt will be for my niece, my oldest brother's youngest child.  She just turned 16 and I fully expect a message from her dad reminding me that this is the year she gets a quilt.  Can I be cranky for a moment?  Let's stop modelling entitlement, shall we?  When her older sister turned 16, I got the Facebook message "Hannah wants to make sure you know she turned 16 last month so you don't forget to make her a quilt."  Seriously?!  My response was something along the lines of "and she can't tell me this herself because...?"  My suspicion is that the message was NOT from Hannah, but from my brother himself, who has never before let the threat of "I can't believe you just said that" from in fact saying.  That.



And then there's this one.  This troublesome one.  It was not planned, it demanded my attention.  It kept pulling me away from what I was doing to work on it.  It just had to be, and it had to be BIG.  Who's it for?  Dunno.  Not me, I know that.  I have a nephew turning 16 next year, but I don't think it's for him either.  Maybe when it's done, I'll know.  But before I get to either of these, I have this.

This is not my quilt, I'm finishing it for the sister of a kinda/sorta/current/former friend.  Ish.  It's complicated.  Let's just call this Rhoda's quilt.  Isn't it pretty?  The picture doesn't do it justice, I just hope my quilting does.  I didn't realize when I first got it, that the outer ring was a sampler.  The colours are the same, but the patterns are different.  4 patch based blocks, 9 patches, 5 patches... I've got a plan. 
That centre, though, deserved more than just an all over random finish, so it got this.  I'm pretty pleased, but don't look too close.