Recently in Quilting Etc. Category
We did not have a girl baby because I quilt.
Okay, I used to quilt. But hey, I got my sewing machine set back up again this weekend so there is hope.
The fact that my chosen sewing-related hobby is quilting tells you two things about me:
I can sew.
I like sewing flat things.
If we had a girl baby, because of the bit above that says "I can sew," people who know I can sew would expect me to make her dresses and rompers and whatever. However, did you read that bit up above that says "I like sewing flat things"? Last I checked, children's clothing is not flat.
So people would ask me when I was going to sew something for her, and when I said "never" they wouldn't believe me in the same way that no one believes me when I said I didn't want to have another baby, and I'm all "no really" and they're like "you'll forget how much you hated being pregnant" and I'm all "maybe if I get a head injury." It is my least favorite thing to be told how I feel, by the way. It's even worse than chocolate. (If you're new here, I hate chocolate. Hate. I hate being told I don't really hate it, too, so don't go there.)
While attempting to maintain my disguise as a civil, non-misanthropic member of society when in the presence of my offspring, I would then be burdened with:
1. My desperate boredom at having to hear the 1,032nd stranger say "Well I can see where that child gets the red hair from!" or "You must be Irish!" or whatever stunningly insightful comment they can come up with about the fact that C-Man, Boy Detective, and I are all redheads. OMG, yes, sometimes people with red hair meet, get married, and have children. But we're GERMAN and SCOTTISH and no, no one has ever mentioned it before that we all have red hair so you are providing me with extremely valuable information.
2. My complete lack of desire to respond to the question "How old is he?" from other parents of young children given that right now, the second most popular topic after his hair color is his extremely articulate speech, and it makes other parents act like their two year old is somehow defective - because you know, Boy Detective was walking independently at nine months and now all the other two year olds are still not as good at walking as he is. Oh, except hang on, they're all walking the same now and have been for quite some time. And my kid barks out the window when he sees a dog walking down the street, so you might want to factor that in.
3. The pressure of continually defending to friends and family my complete lack of desire to make floral bloomers or bonnets or whatever and cover them with ruffles and gathers and smocking.
Thank you, universe, for not sending me a girl baby. I can only handle so much.
Almost $100 for basic service? It bloody well better work perfectly, especially since the girl who checked it in had such an attitude problem.
I'd like to think that if I concentrate, I could finish one of the partly done quilts for our bed in time for the holidays. I'd like to think that, but I don't, because I'm 98% sure it isn't true.
Luckily J and G gave us a comforter that one of their dogs ate a couple of holes in, so we don't freeze.
Come to think about it, it's been over a decade since I wasn't routinely sleeping under a blanket that a dog ate a hole in.
Hmm.
Perhaps I will not put a quilt on our bed for a few more years.
My mom can't find an armchair chair small enough to replace an old one in one particular corner of her house. Everything she can find is "overstuffed" or somesuch. Cars have turned into SUVs, which have turned into mega-SUVs, which caused me no end of giggling when one of my former co-workers lamented that they'd just bought a house but couldn't park in their new garage. Serves them right.
More distressing to me, though, is that older quilts don't fit on today's beds. By older, I don't mean antique. I mean 10 years old. Deeper mattresses mean that quilts sized for mattresses common when I was 20 years old are now too short.
Ah, progress. I had managed to memorize the suggested dimensions for a queen size quilt, but my knowledge is already obsolete.
I do apologize. I've been a bit distractified.
You see, I'm writing elsewhere too. Yes, I know, you are the most important readers. However, unless you're going to start sending me checks, I feel I must see other people as well. After six months of all-baby-all-the-time, it's time for some Real Work around here.
(All of you who have children are now laughing, yes?)
In case you are behind on what I've been up to, I am blogging about environmental issues in crafting at Crafting A Green World, part of the Green Options network which is totally for great justice. They have a food blog and a fashion and style blog as well, and then a good number of other blogs that are much more serious and also quite good.
Hey look, a commercial on my blog!
Seriously, though, y'all know I'm all about shaming you for using plastic bags saving the world, and I feel good about working with these folks. So stop by and check us out. Or if you just want to see what I've been doing, visit my own personal corner of the GO empire.
I just caught the baby staring at the Bernina with a huge grin on his face.
Our good friend SBW has been working to ensure that baby's first word is "quilt," with "craft" as a backup. Perhaps it's working?
Those of you who know me are aware that I shy away from 3-d sewing, preferring the flat world of quilts. It's a bit odd, since I started my sewing habit by making clothes, both for myself and my Barbies. (Yes, I admit it.) However, Victoria Everman posted a list of Top 5 Must-Have DIY Sewing Tomes at new blog Crafting a Green World - and despite my aversion to 3-d, I found myself strangely tempted. 99 Ways to Cut, Sew & Deck Out Your Denim? Hmm, there's a whole rack of denim at Goodwill just waiting to be explored...
The book I would add to Victoria's list is Second Time Cool: The Art of Chopping Up a Sweater by by Anna-Stina Linden Ivarsson, Katarina Brieditis, and Katarina Evans. Though I live in warm and friendly Austin, there are a couple of weeks out of the year when it's on the chilly side. February, basically. And I hate being cold. So I wanted to check out what I could do with great wool sweaters that have fallen victim to holes. I have a few here, and I regularly see them at thrift stores. Second Time Cool delivered. Even for someone who doesn't want to do a lot of hand sewing and embellishment, mittens and scarves are easy. If you want to do something funkier, there are wrist cuffs, necklaces, and even skirts. So now I'm trying to decide whether I'd rather wear the blue sweater in my drawer or felt it and chop it up.
After all, I have several more weeks until it gets cold here. Surely I can take on a new craft during the baby's naps and bust out some winter accessories?
- Gee's Bend - Ties and Christmas Ornaments, blogged by Kyra E. Hicks at her blog Black Threads. (Ms. Hicks is the author of several books on quilting. If you're into quilts and you're not reading her blog yet, why not?) Yummy ornaments, ties, and other Gee's Bend designs.
- Crafting a Green World, a new blog at GreenOptions.com, covers eco-friendly crafting books, events, companies, and more. It's just started, so head over and give them some love.
- This 404 page is overwhelming, but amusing.
- Wallpapers and screensavers from National Geographic, via this post on etc.. Lovely.
- Where cats go when they die.
Friday in the craft blog world is Work In Progress (WIP) Friday. So here are the three quilts I have in progress. In progress, in this case, means started but not finished. I'm not really making much progress lately... for some reason...
1. Purple, Green, and Cream colored quilt for our king-sized bed. We planned on 12 inch blocks, randomly arranged. We laid out the rows across the bed. Then we realized it would look cooler if the rows were different widths. So I sewed the rows together, then cut two of them apart into skinnier rows. One was cut in half, the other was cut into 1/3 and 2/3. If we could manage to lay it back out to choose the new order of the rows pretty soon, I think it could get done by the end of the year. I'm eyeing Thanksgiving weekend hopefully, since there will be people around to cuddle the baby.
2. Earlier attempt at a quilt for our bed, made entirely of scraps of previous projects. 2160 rectangles, each 2.5 by 3.5 inches. You can perhaps understand why this didn't get done, and we moved on to the 12 inch blocks idea. (Side note: when I suggested putting this one on hold and trying to get the other one done before the baby was born, C-Man expressed trepidations about starting another project before this one was completed. Ha ha ha ha ha! He is not a crafter.) But this is a nice one to do in 20 minute increments here and there, because it's just chain piecing and there's no risk I'll run out and have to stand up and iron any time soon.
3. T-shirt quilt for a certain someone who helped me paint my quilt studio. I am trying not to feel guilty about not getting this done before I had the baby, since I know the recipient doesn't hold it against me, but I wish I had finished it already. I don't know when I would have done it, but I wish I had.
I'm always interested to see people's thoughts about who makes quilts and what quilts are like.
Christine Liu, a guest poster on Decor8, saluted hip quilter Denyse Schmidt but contrasted her work with Christine's image of quilting: "At least for me, quilting seems still relatively entrenched in the German Dutch tradition and midwestern generational home-making." Then Brent Myers, a Decor8 reader, commented that "I've been looking for books that teach you how to take traditional ways and put a new spin on them." Decor8 posted his his cool men's suiting quilt the next day. (Definitely check it out.)
Then on Whip-up I saw the post International Quilt Festival: What's a Modernist To Do?:
The show always makes us feel a bit lonely, wondering whether or not there will ever be a critical mass of really interesting quilters at one of these shows. There are some contemporary quilts on display but few vendors carrying fabrics or books we would buy. Mostly there were a whole lot of versions of 19th century patterns and predictable novelty fabrics one might expect to find used in pediatric nurses’ uniforms. Need any tea-stained lace? How about a CD you can stick in your sewing machine so it can automatically embroider a Disney character onto your quilt? Lonely, very, very lonely.
I blinked a little bit after reading these. I forget that not everyone has gone through the process I did. When I started quilting I saw all the boring junk, but since then I've developed a bit of selective blindness. The quilting industry flourishes because of the huge market for pastels, florals, novelty prints, patterns for traditional blocks, etc. However, I've tuned it out. Unless I'm making a kid quilt, in which case novelty prints can come in handy. When I'm at IQF, I don't notice how many booths are full of boring stuff, because I'm caught by all the booths that offer hand-dyes, batiks, and Japanese fabrics. (Though the 2005 show did seem a little drab.)
My dominant impressions of quilters are people like Ruth McDowell, Judy Dales, and Hollis Chatelain, who are seriously boundary-exploding artists. They are the stars of the quilt world, the sought-after speakers and teachers, and the award-winners. I guess I look to them and others like them as what "defines" quilting for me, rather than the mass-marketed products that support the industry.
In fact, I've stopped subscribing to one of the quilt magazines I've taken for over 5 years because it's full of pictures of modern, artistic quilts and I'm getting tired of it. I'd rather focus more right now on things I might actually make.
I'm not saying these folks are wrong to feel that way. When I first tried to get involved in the Austin Area Quilt Guild I thought I was doomed to hearing about Sunbonnet Sue for the rest of my life. But there's a heck of a lot out there on how to break out of the block-block-block-all-identical-all-pastel routine, even before this recent crop of hip young quilters.
The hip young quilters are cool, though, and you should check them out. Kim from Dioramarama is a Whip-Up quilt correspondent who knows her stuff when it comes to the intersection of art and quilt. Check out her profiles of quilters Wendy Huhn, Lisa Call, and Angela Moll. Way to smash those preconceptions, ladies! And I'm loving Denyse Schmidt's new book.
