A couple of months ago I met Sandy Klop, the designer of
American Jane patterns and fabric, at a local quilt show. Someone had a version of this quilt in the show and I was blown away by the woven effect and by the fact that I could NOT figure out how it was constructed. It turns out that Sandi had the pattern for sale; it's called Pretzel Party. I had to have it, even after she told me it had lots of Y-seams. "I'm not afraid of Y-seams", I proclaimed boldly...

Ha ha ha. This damn quilt has 12 Y-seams in each block! Plus the ones in the half-pretzels around the sides. That's way too many Y-seams for me. Luckily I discovered this before I cut into the beautiful Bali-pop I was going to use, because I was smart enough to try a block with scraps first... very tedious stuff, and I don't do tedious over and over very well! (but I still think it would look terrific in batiks)

I spent a chaotic weekend in Seattle with my youngest brother and his brood. The heavy quilt seems to be a hit with the oldest daughter, as she slept more peacefully the first night with it. The middle kids are fun and crazy, but the youngest is a wild child, boundlessly energetic and fearless. This came to a head on Saturday when he was racing around the house and slid into the base of a table, dislodging one of his teeth... after an emergency trip to the dentist he will now have a bit of a gap-toothed smile until his permanent tooth grows in:

He screamed bloody murder until the tooth was pulled; after that he was back to racing around the house. (If you need the name of a fabulous pediatric dentist in Seattle, just ask -- this guy was amazing!)
And finally, just to keep one of my themes going, this was our hotel room in Seattle:

I swear, it's a different chain altogether than where we stayed in Madison (see banner above) but what is it with these pillows? Sculptural qualities aside, they are pretty much useless -- much too thick and foam-rubbery to sleep on comfortably.