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Operation Quilt: Day 3
I sewed 31 squares today. It was brutal. Just kidding. It wasn’t that bad but I am sort of feeling weary of all this fabric and wishing I could just stuff it in a box somewhere and forget about it. But I can’t. I did that once before. I have a quilt somewhere in the depths of one of my mom’s storage sheds. I think I was fifteen when I started it. I should dig it up and see if I hate the fabric. It’s funny how tastes change with time.
I’ve been thinking how tastes in colors and combinations change with time as I sewed together odd combination after odd combination. I like clashing fabrics but I have this feeling that Bug will probably grow up to hate them. It will be cool again when she has kids but I wonder if the quilt will last that long?
It’s sort of fun to work carefully on something that might live longer than you do. I asked my mom if she thought this quilt would last longer than I will and she was doubtful. I guess it depends on how well I sew it, what Bug does with it in her lifetime and how long I plan on living. I’m aiming for 80 but who knows…
It’s great to sit at a table sewing and talk about life and things with your mom. Especially when your kid is happy and playing with your nieces. I should pay those kids for babysitting. They played all day long, only stopping long enough to wolf down lunch and dinner.
I’m not sure what Bug and SuperChic were playing here but they were pretending to be boyfriend and girlfriend for a good portion of the day. It was hilarious. Poor Bug was the boy most of the day. I don’t know if that was her choice or if SuperChic bullied her into it. She didn’t seem to mind being the boy. Though at one point I heard her yell at Superchic, “You’re not going to marry me and I’m not going to marry you!”
I think SuperChic took the rejection well.
Anyway, I quilted all day. At the end of the day I ran out of thread. Not part of the plan but it was just as well because I needed to stop. Quilting, it’s not for the weak.
For those of you who are not bored of this quilting subject, below is the general plan.
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Operation Quilt: Day 2
I know you are all sitting on the edges of your seats waiting to hear how it’s going on the quilting front. It’s an exciting raging battle between me and the threads, let me tell you. Today I pretty much just cut. Cutting cutting cutting… It was hard though!
I hate cutting this fabric up. I feel so much pressure to use it wisely. The patterns are so old. Each piece seems like it holds a story, if only I knew what it was. I bought them in a stack at an estate sale years ago for something like 25 cents a piece. I know they are old flour sacks but I don’t know how old they are. I hope I am doing them right putting them into a quilt. It seems like a better thing to do than keep them away in some dark corner of my closet.
So cut away I did, as carefully as I could. I admit I had to take several breaks because some of the flour sacks were wonkey and not square. It’s stressful (for me) to figure out the best way to cut an odd shape to use every scrap possible. Way too much math for my lopsided brain. I even called my mom in a moment of weakness.
Somehow my mom magically figured out a way to get untangled from whatever she was doing and she came to my rescue! I love my mom. Or maybe she just couldn’t resist all the fun I’m having with this silly quilt. She and my nieces drove down to visit me. Which is great because Bug is bored out of her skull rattling around in this great big house full of toys to play with.
What kind of kid gets bored in a house full of somebody eles’s toys? She is so weird that way. She’s never played with toys much. She has a room full of them and she’d rather bug me. She’s always been that way.
It’s nice because I never have to pick up much after her but it’s a pain in the butt because sometimes I’d like to do my own thing, like you know, make a quilt or something. So I’m very happy my nieces are here to entertain my favorite little monster. Not that I don’t like Bug’s company or anything. I just need some space once in a while.
Once they were here I finished cutting pretty quickly. I did sew a few pieces together just to see how’d they’d look. I wasn’t sure about the strip width but I think I’m settled on it now. It’s actually turning out to be a lot easier than I thought. I don’t want to jinx myself but I think I can totally do this, especially now that my mom is here. She’s not doing it for me, that would be cheating, but she is helping me out of those crazy second-guessing circles I seem to spin myself into.
