a finished quilt top

My friend Elaine invited me over to her studio where she did all of the work helped me calculate borders for the H quilt.  I had found a delicious Kaffe Fassett print and was scared reluctant to cut into it without Elaine's expertise.  Many thanks to you Elaine - I couldn't have managed without you!  Your generous nature and amazing cutting table turned this UFO into a completed top!  Yay!

This image was taken moments before the skies opened and let loose with a wonderful torrent of rain!  Harley was not asked to pose - he simply appeared for this photo!  After all, he was the one who sat out all of the cutting and pressing and piecing of the quilt - what better closure than to lend his good-looking self to the beauty shot?

I plan to send this piece, my FIRST king-sized top, to a machine quilter.  I am in Wanda's debt for introducing me to this joyful block - thank you, my friend!  I follow your blog religiously and you never cease to amaze me.

One always hopes for lighter days to follow the dark ones.  These colors lift me, help me to focus on the positive aspects of this one life.  And, as always, I've returned to my favorite - ORANGE.

A carotene table runner!  My carrots never came up this season, so I made a giant fiber substitute!  I'm still wondering what went wrong with those seeds.

I like this piece a lot.  Orange continues to be my neutral - my  inspiration, my obsession.  

When the rain stopped we took a stroll outdoors, shaking off too many days and nights of artificial air.  Don't get me wrong - I am pathetically addicted to, and grateful for, and LOST without, the central air conditioning.  But there's something so powerful about that green-ness, that SMELL of the earth when it rises to meet the rain after so many days deprived of its goodness.

I'll get back to the herb garden with my new plan to replant the herbs and flowers that I'll need for the moth/mouse repellant that I want to create.  (please don't look at those weeds!)

A finished quilt top and a healing summer rain...perfection, except for what is missing and how we continue to miss him.  On the morning that Jack died, my Madonna lily bloomed.

Pristine.  Fragrant. Breath-taking.

Signs in the universe.  All is unfolding exactly the way that it is supposed to.