Midsummer comments: 71

The middle. The greens have deepened. The sun is hot and rich. If there were cicadas here they'd be humming in the afternoons, but instead they hum in my memory of them humming. It's a Midwestern memory, one of many. There was a scent in the air the other day as Amelia and I got out of the car to have our lunch at a Thai restaurant I've only just started going to, needing a change. Something was blooming but I don't know what. It was the smell of a field, or a meadow, though we were nowhere near one. Far from, in fact. A sob caught in my throat. Our neighborhood feels urban in the worst of ways, lately. Overcrowded, filled with cars, crime, and a general crustiness that has me world-weary. I long for a Queen-Anne's-lace-lined gravel road, birdsong, a lake with a pier I could sit on and dangle my toes, a rowboat with which I could row Amelia into the shade to nap. No noise but nature's noises. I long for these things. Everything feels so far from them, somehow. I don't know why. I can't seem to find the right place for us to go to find them. It seems like just a small, quiet, ordinary place but I can't find it. It must be more extraordinary than I thought. Sometimes I wished we lived in the country.

Instead, I tend my little garden. It's not doing very well, actually, and seems rather stunted. The gourds and cucumbers seem stressed, their lower leaves turning yellow and getting brown splotches and falling off. The broccoli leaves, those beautiful, leathery, spruce-green lobes, are getting eaten by something. I guess everything else is actually doing okay, but it just doesn't seem to be growing very much. I've been watering every day and this is the first time I've been so diligent about doing anything in the garden for years, since before Amelia was born. It feels good and I feel ready to do it again. I mean, I'm still terrible at gardening. I learn things and then I forget them immediately, or I don't learn anything at all. I'm super into it for a while and then I'll get totally neglectful (and, well, busy) and won't water for a week, usually right when it gets super hot and the plants need it most. Well, we'll see. So far I'm doing okay with it, and it feels good.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of your orders during my quilt kit sale the other day. I am so incredibly happy that these are selling, and yes, I have more coming. I have at least twenty new fabrics that haven't even been cut yet. I'm working on my skirt pattern — and yes, to those who've asked, it is the skirt hanging next to my basket on my post last week — and I'm going to be selling a limited amount of yardage of these vintage calicos to go with my skirt pattern. The pattern has no pieces for you to print out or cut out or anything like that — the skirt is made entirely of rectangles cut with a rotary cutter and ruler, and you can make it any size you'd like. I've literally made five of these skirts in the past few weeks as I've been working on the pattern, and I've been wearing one or another almost every single day. I put my phone/wallet in one pocket and my keys in the other and I go. So practical. I'm haaaaaaappy with this particular summer solution. It's good.

Andy Paulson. The kind of dad I wish every child in the world could have. Happy Father's Day, my dear, dear irrepressible, darling love. XOXO

Even MORE Calicozy ComfyQuilt Top Kits Available at 4 p.m. PDT! SOLD OUT comments: 8

***Thank you to everyone who ordered! I will be shipping tomorrow (Friday) and will have more coming in the next month or so. Please stay tuned and thank you SO MUCH to everyone who likes these. I sincerely appreciate it more than I can say. Thank you! :)))

 

Welcome to the third installment of the Calicozy ComfyQuilt Top Kit sale! I'm cutting and pasting the general information here directly out of my old posts, since the information has not changed. Please scroll down to see the new kits!

Recently I decided to make myself a throw quilt out of my very favorite calicos from the 1980s and 1990s — tiny, charming floral prints from my childhood and early adulthood that remain, for me, the epitome of fabric sweetness. It turned out to be so pretty that I began collecting similar vintage fabrics so that I could offer quilt-top kits, along with a pattern, to make a quilt-comforter like mine.

This quilt is set on-point, so the square patches actually display as diamonds. It is designed to be turned inside out instead of bound, tied at each patch intersection, and filled with a poufy, inexpensive comforter from Ikea (though you can use batting, if you like). The Ikea comforter can be purchased both at the Ikea store and on-line.

Please note that these sizes are smaller than standard quilts or comforters. Modeled after old-fashioned eiderdowns, this quilt is meant to sit mostly on top of your mattress, and doesn’t have a long overhang.

The approximate finished sizes are: Toddler 42" x 58" (107cm x 147cm); Throw 58" x 58" (147cm x 147cm); Twin 58" x 80" (147cm x 203cm); Full/Queen 80" x 80" (203cm x 203cm); King 101" x 80" (257cm x 203cm).

To make the Calicozy ComfyQuilt, you will need to purchase the Calicozy ComfyQuilt PDF pattern, available only as a digital download, HERE.

And then if you are interested, you can purchase a quilt-top kit (please note that the kits are for the TOP ONLY) in one of several colorways, shown below. Click on each image to be taken to my web shop where you may purchase a kit for one of five sizes.

 

 WENDY DARLING

 

STRAWBERRY FIELDS

 

SWEET JANE

 

MARY ROSE

 

BISHOP'S GATE

 

GERANIUM WINDOW

 

WILD LILAC

Please note that the virtual tops shown here are an approximation of the prints and solids you will receive with this quilt-top kit. The kit you receive will include vintage cotton calicos and non-vintage cotton solid fabrics already cut for you into 4.25" (11cm) strips. Because these print fabrics are vintage and available in limited supply, you may not receive every fabric pictured, but you will receive 15 unique fabrics that are consistent with the overall colorway presented. Each kit includes enough fabric to make the top for each quilt size as described. I believe that all of the print fabrics are vintage, and 100% cotton, but I can't absolutely guarantee it.

We do ship overseas! To place your order, you will be required to read this information, which contains details about international shipping and customs fees you may incur when ordering outside the U.S. (If you are overseas, the shipping cost charged by Posie does not include any further charges you may incur when importing goods.) To see the shipping-only costs for your order and location, just place the items in your cart and choose your location (or enter your zip code, if you are in the U.S.) and it will tell you how much the shipping is. As usual, I have a sincere request: Please check on and update your shipping address correctly in your Paypal preferences so that there is no confusion when we go to ship. If you do need to add things to your order or change your address after you've placed the order, just email me and we'll figure it out, no worries! I just like to remind people of this ahead of time, because it's a bit easier.

Thank you, as always, for your enthusiasm for and interest in my work and in these kits. I will keep making these as long as there is interest, so if you miss out this time, more will be coming.

If you have any questions, leave them in the comments and I will get back to you here. Thank you!

Calicozy Preview III comments: 17

Helloooooooo, dears. I was trying to get this posted on Friday but, life. Here is the third installment of the Calicozy ComfyQuilt Top Kits preview. Once again, I will have two different sale times for people who live in different parts of the world, or have different schedules. The virtual quilts that appear below are for your preview purposes only. The quilt top kits, in all sizes, will be available for sale here on Wednesday, June 21, at 9:30 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time and then again on the same day at 4 p.m. PDT.

These kits are the first batch from a purchase of new old stock from a quilt shop in West Virginia that closed in the '90s. This is literally just the beginning of me dipping into this incredible stash of fabric, more of which arrives every week or so. Because the quantity of fabric that I now have is HUGE, I had almost all of the fabric I'm using for these kits cut by an enormous and sophisticated laser cutting machine by the crew at Spooltown, a small-run sewing factory down the street who cut tons of the fabric for my animal kits a couple of years ago. I still can't believe I have a resource like this literally down the street, and I can't even say enough about how much I love working with Dana and Sara. Please read about them and see how cool this place is. I will have one of each size of every colorway pictured below, with three of each size for the colorways Wendy Darling, Strawberry Fields, and Sweet Jane. And, once again, if you miss these, more will be coming at the end of the summer, especially now that Andy and I are not doing all of the cutting ourselves.

For more information on these kits, please visit this post from the first time they were on sale. And I would also suggest that, now that the pattern is available, if you are interested in shopping for a kit when the time comes, either purchase the pattern ahead of time (or later), or even just put it in your cart so you don't have to do that when you're trying to get a kit.

Okay, see you Wednesday! I will have a new post with live links to my web shop where you can purchase. Also, in the next couple of weeks I will have some of these fabrics on sale by the half-yard to go with the any-size-skirt pattern I am almost finished with and will be releasing soon. Thank you! Xo, a

 

WENDY DARLING

 

STRAWBERRY FIELDS

 

SWEET JANE

 

MARY ROSE

 

BISHOP'S GATE

 

GERANIUM WINDOW

 

WILD LILAC

Cold Start comments: 82

The weather here has been absolutely freezing. Apparently we're just going to be hurled from one extreme condition (scorching) to another (freezing). I had the heat on last night, and the flannel sheets. I'm not really complaining (much) as this has been perfect knitting weather. All the knitters I know are surreptitiously knitting as fast as we can, trying to finish stuff to wear before the next heat wave. Because honestly, we need sweaters right now. And probably scarves. It's that cold.

Something really, really cool happened to me the other day. I came in from watering out back and I heard this very loud birdsong, and found that there was a chickadee sitting in the dining room. We don't have screens (or mosquitoes), but a bird has never flown into the house before. Birds have been in the house before, brought in in a state of mortal crisis by The Bee. But in this case, she, Old Lady Bee, was sleeping on a chair on the porch, literally right outside the window above which the bird was sitting and singing its heart out. She continued to sleep. The bird flew from curtain rod to pendant-lamp cord to picture moulding, singing and stopping to look around. He didn't seem in distress. My heart started racing a bit. I opened all of the windows as wide as they would go, and threw open the front door. I went outside and watered the front, hoping he would find his way out. I talked to my neighbor for about an hour, and we could hear him singing in there the whole time. A friend of his was flitting around outside, frantically calling for him, but he continued to sing his way around the dining room and didn't come out. I went back in and talked to him a bit. I really needed to come in and go to work (in the back of the house) and wanted to shut the front door. He did more flying from thing to thing. I stood still and talked, very quietly. He tilted his little head, listening. Suddenly he flew down to the lampshade on the entry table. I walked over very slowly and he stayed on the lampshade. I seriously could not believe it. I was two feet away. We stayed like that for minutes. I don't know how many minutes. I lifted my arm and held my finger out to him, moving a bit closer. He tilted his head again and sidestepped away. I stayed like that, with my arm out, until my arm started getting tired. Then I propped my other elbow on the entry table and started holding up my right arm with my left hand. We stood like this for a long time. Still, he didn't fly away. I inched my hand closer. I put my finger up to his feet, holding my breath. He was so small. He put one foot on my finger and then took it off. I kept my finger there. Suddenly he put both feet on my finger and started pecking at the tip of my finger. He was so light. He pecked at the tip of my finger some more. I was smiling hugely, afraid to breathe. Slowly I walked over to the open window, him on my finger, bobbing nervously, the whole time. When I got to the window and moved my arm outside he started to walk up my arm, toward me! I moved my arm further out the window, afraid he would fly off and back into the house! But then suddenly he was off, flying up into the sky.

It was, honestly, one of the most awesome, most amazing things that has ever happened to me in my whole life. It was so, so, so cool. I still cannot even believe it! It was so cool!

I forgot to say that at some point, Bridget did hear me talking and she came into the house through the door and started sauntering back and forth through the dining room. She knew something was going on but she couldn't figure out what, and she never saw the bird. She kept coming back into the room in mild confusion, like she thought she should definitely be involved in something. And she mostly just wanted to go back to bed. The old girl is seventeen years old this summer. She's mostly a wild cat. An old wild cat, now. She's never really sat on my lap, in seventeen years. That's not to say she hasn't been on my lap, but when she gets on my lap (once a year or so) we are both so totally freaked out that it's about as far from a lovely or relaxing experience for us both as it gets. She acts completely bewildered to have suddenly found herself on my lap. She skitters around on my legs as if her paws are on fire. I freeze in place, trying to avert my eyes lest I be caught looking at her (because she will punch you in the face faster than the speed of light if she catches you meeting her eye). It's like having a cross between a squirrel and a goblin for a pet. But she comes home every night, she loves us in her way, we love her in ours, Clover Meadow intelligently tries to give her wide berth (although occasionally she will walk up to Clover and try to head-moosh her, and Clover's entire body stiffens in terror, and we all hold our breath, too, until it's over), and Amelia screams like a banshee every time Bridget comes flying through the room like a fruit bat trying to get out of the light. Little Bee. Our little alley kitten. Doing pretty well for an old girl.

I told Andy I don't think I've ever taken a picture of Clover that more accurately captures her than the one above. Sweetest heart ever. Drives me insane on a daily basis. But I love her so much. Dear love. That face.

I've been ridiculously busy. Andy had the week off and I've just been working, working, working. I drafted a skirt pattern for you. And bought half of the remaining inventory from a quilt shop that closed in the '90s. Not even kidding. More on both of these things soon. New quilt kits coming! Next week! They're really pretty. I can't wait.