Hot Hot Summertime

One of our favorite pastimes is going shopping for antiques.  Now the words thrifting or junking are more popular than antiquing…but whatever you call it, Jim and I enjoy doing it.  

One of our favorite haunts is Monroe, GA.  It’s the birthplace of my partner in crime, so the route there and back is filled with stories of his childhood travels in that part of the state.  So as we travel to find treasures, we travel through time, too.

On our most recent visit, we took along a quilt.  It’s made with brightly colored fabrics using a pattern by Tula Pink called Birdseed.  I followed her suggestions for background fabrics in shades of gray, and pulled bright prints from my stash for the orange peel and flying geese blocks.  

I love quilts that combine applique and piecing, and this simple design gave me some handwork to do in front of the tv at night with minimal preparation.  In fact, to decrease that prep time even more, I used my Accuquilt cutting device to cut the melons.  The size die I had did not match Tula’s template size, so I resized the whole quilt.  I don’t know how many units her pattern specified; I just made them until I thought I had enough; put them on the design wall and moved them around until I was happy.  Then I sewed them together.

I pieced brightly colored fabrics for the backing, layered and pin-based the whole thing, then put it aside until this spring.  Quilting it was fun.  I played with different free-motion designs in each area enclosed by the melons.  As I finished this project, the daily high temperatures were three digits.  The vibrant colors in the quilt said, it’s Hot Hot Summertime, so that’s the title.

Several of the antique malls we visit in Monroe, Ga (throughout the state, actually) are housed in old textile mills. In front of Hodge Podge are some old techology relics.  We posed Hot Hot Summertime in several spots on that property.  Her vibrant colors are a nice contrast with the dull rust machinery; her soft texture pleasing against the hard surfaces of brick and stone.