Well, I guess it really isn’t so curious why I’ve been missing, but I thought it was a great title. As I’ve said before, COVID-19 really has done a number on me. I haven’t had the virus, thank goodness, but I have struggled a bit with the mental aspects of being in this situation. I haven’t seen my parents in months, because I’m afraid of infecting them. The only socialization I have had has been with my kids and my husband. I’m not a very social person – in fact, I’m quite introverted – but this is a bit much, even for me.

I guess I have finally come to the realization that we could continue on like this for a while longer, most certainly through the end of this year, and quite possibly in to summer 2021 by some estimations. There isn’t a lot you can do in a situation like this, so I’ve been trying to distract myself with quilting lately. I decided that I wanted something that was simple, easy to piece, and would not try my patience too much. A simple Irish chain seemed to fit the bill, so I opened up EQ8 and came up with this simple design.

I love the simplicity of a two color quilt, and a nine patch is easy to piece. And I love my fabric selections for this quilt.

Not the best photos, I know, but my studio doesn’t have the best lighting. The whites are tone on tone white with three different patterns. The two blues are much closer in hue than they appear here, and together, all of them are stunning, in my opinion. I ordered the fabric from Connecting Threads when I couldn’t find enough blue and white locally. I mean, seriously – both of the quilt shops I went to were completely sold out of solid white and blue, which was my first plan for the quilt. When that didn’t pan out, I turned to the internet. I prefer to spend most of my quilting dollars with a local shop, but right now, that’s more difficult than you’d think when it comes to basics like solids and mottled fabrics.

Anyway, I’m really pleased with the way things are looking on the quilt.

I’ve spent most of my lunch breaks over the last week working on the quilt. I’m using my Viking Sapphire 930, and it’s doing a great job.

Yesterday, I managed to get all of my rows finished, so this weekend, I’m hoping to get the quilt top completed. We have to paint our new living space, though, so the quilt top may not get finished just yet. Still, I have lunch on Friday to work on it, so you never know! Maybe I’ll make good progress on it then and be able to finish up this weekend.

This quilt has been a lot of fun to work on, I think because it’s so easy. It isn’t exactly mindless, but it’s not nearly as fussy as some of the other things I’ve done recently. I was paging through Pinterest recently and I realized that so many of the quilt designs that are popular right now are very precise, or in my own terms, fussy. So many of them are pictorial, and that’s fine, if you like that sort of thing. I think they’re beautiful quilts, but I find myself being less and less willing to devote so much time to a quilt. I’ve been able to get this quilt top nearly completed in less than two weeks. The pictorial quilts have blocks that seem to take that long. I have decided that for now, at least, those just are not for me. I’ve written previously about my loathing of samplers, but I think one and two block quilts are perfect for my own style.

I will be excited to get this one finished so I can move on to my next quilting adventure, and I suspect it will be as simple, and yet satisfying, as this quilt has been so far.