Why I have been so quiet

Since halfway through my vacation, I have not been in the right headspace to post here. Once I got back from the UK and Japan, I was determined to finish the bed quilt I had started in 2001. It was a BOM from Quilter's Barn, Renwick. It began a month before I left to live in Italy for 8 months. I took all the fabric with me, and my cutting wheel and mat. I didn't have a sewing machine there.

Living in Italy was a bit strange. It was less than a year since I had split from my husband, and I wasn't sure what to do next, or where to do it. I went to live in Brescia, which is between Milan and Verona. The first couple of weeks were horrible, living in a dirty flat run by a strange taciturn man - arranged through the school, Inlingua, that I was working for. After that I got a fairly expensive room in a flat on the edge of the central area of town. My landlady/flatmate was from Argentina, and spoke no English. Maria was fairly garulous and most of our conversations consisted of her rattling away and me interjecting the occasional 'si, e vero'. I didn't particularly enjoy the work or the firm. Most of the time I was teaching business English to individuals or groups of 2 or 3. Inlingua has its own textbooks and method, which didn't leave a lot of room for developing your own resources. I was not that experienced at teaching, but I did know that modern methodology for language speaking means the teacher should not talk more than the student. Yet, the most popular teachers were egomaniac guys with lots of stories to tell!

I enjoyed Italy, I enjoyed living in a historic city that was not on the main tourist thoroughfare. It was magic to be able to cycle (no helmet required, hairstyles far more important than brain damage) into the centre and listen to openair concerts, recitals, circus performances, all in balmy summer evenings. Daytimes were very hot by May through to September, with frequent afternoon thunderstorms. The flat was in the mansard roof, good, as it had a roof garden, bad, as hot air rises. Below us was a pizzeria that made fabulous prawn and rocket pizzas. During the afternoons I often had 3 hours to fill in between lunchtime lessons and after-work lessons. I tried to cut out the triangles and squares for the quilt, but it was hot work.



Finally I completed the central section of the quilt, the landscape, with appliqued grapevines round the outside. I didn't have much experience of quilting large things, but I knew that the central portion would be quite tricky to reach. So I quilted that centre section while it was still manageable. That might have been in 2002. At various other times in the next 3 years I made the rest of the blocks for the quilt and the borders and added them to the quilt top. Even later I added more backing fabric and batting and tacked it all together. I stitched round a couple of borders to keep it from shifting and put it in the UFO box.

Finally, in about March I got it out and determined to finish it. I almost did it before I went to England this time, but in fact there was more to do than I thought. After I had done the meandering and some of the block joins with a gold patterned stitch, I thought I only had a couple of things to do. But I found I had to machine the stems of the vines, which I had hand stitched. Then after the meandering the central area was a bit puffy and I had to add some stitching to that.

I pinned it to the carpet and steamed it square yesterday and pronounced it finished.

Sure the satin stitch from 2001 is not up to my current standard, but it looks good from a galloping horse, and that's OK with me.