This piecing is addictive!

So I had this fabric I had bought at the flea market in Honolulu - already cut into rectangles - scraps from a garment manufacturing sweatshop no doubt. And I had been planning on planning a lovely, well organized, "Planned" quilt with them. Not just whacked together randomly, but laid out with forethought and consideration. I was putting my fabrics away, and this package of parts fell out of the cupboard and - well, just a few seams. And then just a few more. I was chain sewing and before I knew it, every patch had been joined to another patch. then I thought I would just stick a few patches together to see how they would work up. Before I knew what was happening, I was whacking together sections and slapping together colors, and then, unless I wanted to deconstruct a hell of a lot, I had to use this section here to fill out that section there and voila, another comforter is born. (I had the jass station on the radio. It might be Duke Ellington's fault that I got so carried away.)

Mostly blue side.


Mostly red side.

And the survivor rose is blooming. We had planted a lovely peachy/apricot hybrid tea rose here at the corner of the house, and the next winter was very severe, and the rose froze out. sigh. So in the spring we whacked off the dead canes and re-considered what to plant there. And as we thought, new shoots began to rise from the root stock. Hybrid tearoses are often grafted onto old rose species rootstock to partake of the old rose vigor. This old rose root survived the cold that killed the hybrid, and began to thrive in it's original glory. I don't know which single-blooming climbing red it is, but it's so willing and hardy that we don't have the heart to get rid of it, even if dark red isn't the color we would have chosen to go with our light brick facade. This old red is an honest to gosh success story, and the petals, if I remember to harvest them, are divine in potppourri.