Happy Fall

My favorite season! Welcome Fall. This is another one of those things that is probably greatly affected by circumstances, perspective and life in general. I could love Spring but I know what comes after Spring – the most dreaded season of all if you live where we live. Summer to me means extreme heat, drought, wildfire danger, snakes, scorpions, grass burs outside and tracked inside so we can’t even go barefooted inside the house. If we lived where there were cold, brutal winters, I’d probably not love Fall nearly so much but for us, Winter is just a bit different from Fall except for those few rare cold days.

I love everything about Fall. I love soups. I love pumpkin. I love pecans. I love that we may start getting a bit of rain to settle the dust enough that we can sleep with the windows open. I love the shorter days. We’re done with chores and inside the house by 7 p.m. or earlier.

Any time I think of Fall, I am reminded of my Fall Splendor quilt.

This is the quilt that won my first ribbon at an AQS Quilt Show (Nashville). This quilt was made over 15 years ago. Hard to believe — I still remember working on it.

Looking at this quilt, I’m reminded how much quilting has changed through the years. In today’s quilting world, this quilt probably would not even win a ribbon, much less Best of Category. I’ll always love this quilt because it had two funny stories that go with it. One is that it was meant to have been a gift for one of Chad’s teachers and I didn’t get it finished in time. Second, it was one I worked on in the classroom while teaching a Stack & Whack class and the tension wasn’t great so I had to go back with a Sharpie and “touch up” some of those thread dots that were showing. Then, when I walked into the quilt show in Nashville and saw it with that big, beautiful ribbon, I couldn’t believe it. I remember calling Vince and telling him that my quilt had won, and that there was a cash prize. He said “What are you going to do with the money?” I’m sure he thought I’d say I was going to put it in savings but I told him I was walking to the APQS booth as we talked and I was ordering a new Millennium long arm. I had a newer Freedom but had wanted the Millennium and had not wanted to spend that much money. I ordered my Millennium and it was a great investment. Loved it for many years but upgraded a few years ago to new Millennium, which sadly, has not seen much use. Maybe some day I’ll get back into quilting. That’s my hope.

Anyway . . I’m happy to say goodbye to Summer, even if only on the calendar. We have a few more hot, dry weeks but there’s light at the end of the tunnel. This is the the 9th summer we’ve spent in Texas. Hard to believe.

Last night I told Vince . . can you believe tomorrow is the first day of Fall? He said “Really? I guess that means summer is almost over and that’s good!” Yep, very, very good.