Falling Leaves

Years ago, Quilters' Newsletter Magazine wrote about the Original Leaf Applique quilt made in 1890 by Corean Liggitt (1872-1946), including templates of the different leaves Liggitt used. Last year I realized I needed a fall-themed quilt for my wall (I love my tree, cat, and moon quilt, but that's not always the vibe I want). I pulled all my red, orange, and purple batiks and cut out one of each leaf shape, using fusible web to applique them onto a 12" by 18" center:

And then the usual Christmas stitching got in the way, including finishing the Minecraft quilt, so I put the project away. A few weeks ago, after a rather awful summer, I became determined to finish it. Last weekend I sewed up a bunch of maple leaf blocks:

Friday (a blessed day free from my usual obligations) I sewed them on as a border and quilted the whole thing around the center and between the maple leaf blocks. At a loss over how to quilt the center (I did not want the agony of more free-motion quilting), I opted to tie the quilt with embroidery floss and some sparkly beads:

Friday night and Saturday morning I bound the quilt (despite Porcupine's best efforts to prevent me).

I was done! And It makes me so happy to look at it. Fall is my favorite season, and I'm really hoping it's a good one this year; I could use some peace.

Gravity Is the Thing by Jaclyn Moriarty

The same year Abigail begins receiving chapters from a mysterious self-help book, her brother disappears, never to be seen again. Gravity Is the Thing is a novel about how these two events affect Abigail and her choices for decades. The narrative is disjointed and fragmented, uniquely illustrating Abigail's thought processes but also mirroring the messiness of life, where there aren't tidy little resolutions and clear-cut sequences of events. "Causation is complex," Abigail, a former attorney, likes to say. But even that simple statement is challenged by another: "life is full of memories, stories, and facts, and we push our way through them ... and now and then, we pluck one, pull on the seam and make that responsible for everything. ... Which ... is wrong." It's only when Abigail realizes that causation may not matter at all, at least not in the way she thinks, that she can finally live her life free of the blame and self-doubt that has weighed her down. (See what I did there?)

The story is by turns funny and gut-wrenching and profound.  It's also resolutely grounded in real life, despite the self-help book's assertion that Abigail and her companions can learn to fly -- there's not a hint of magic realism here, as characters remind us repeatedly that humans cannot fly, ever.  Instead the novel finds magic in the relationships between the characters, in the small, ordinary events that can brighten a day or cause a major shift in understanding, in the coincidences that change everything, and the moments that free us.