Hooray updates! Yesterday afternoon, on the way home, I asked myself the question that often -- OFTEN -- leads to trouble:  "Okay, so I've cleared lots of the little projects out of the way. What big beast can I tackle tonight?"

I thought about Miss Pretty Primrose, and scratched my head. Hmm. Well, my objection has been that I'd never attempted to do a full-sized quilt on my machine at home, but I had such a horrid experience at the rented longarm quilt machine last time that maybe I should just tackle it.

The sign of doom is when I shift from saying "Oh I should do that sometime" to "Here's how I'd start." When I start laying concrete plans, it's over, buddy.

I haven't talked much about the ideas for Sailor's Warning because I'd not sewed even a test square together. It was little but an ephemeral, wacky idea, and there was no point doing much about it until I had my materials under control.

['Yes, an upholstery factory exploded here']

Some time ago, Danielle pinged me to ask if I wanted some of the upholstery and drapery sample books she'd gotten her hands on. I thought about my grandmother and said yes without hesitation; my grandmother, many many years ago, worked for an upholstery fabric company, and many of the quilts she made for her kids and grandkids came from the mill ends and scraps from her workplace.

I changed up the quilts page a bit recently to give some better insight to what's going on in my head over here. Drupal lets me be flexible with my content types, and some time ago I set up a content type for my quilts. If you look at http://domesticat.net/quilts you'll see my current works-in-progress are roughly ordered by state of completion. I thought I'd explain the terms; I get the impression sometimes that my friends think this process is really inscrutable, when it's not.

Designing and researching.

It's in my head. There's a fine line between "I have an idea" and "Designing and researching." D&R implies a level of commitment.

A couple of weeks ago, when I asked Catherine E. what kind of quilt she was interested in, she told me she loved the look of Dresden Plate quilts from the 1930s. I started researching it, and discovered something I really should have predicted, but had not: many things on places like eBay turn up from estate sales, and quilt pieces are part of estate sales. I've been staring in fascination ever since.

What I realized: if you're looking for the right type of item, it is possible to pick up actual antique unfinished quilt pieces for less money than it would cost to pick up the same amount of reproduction fabric representing the same period, and make the pieces yourself.

Discretion is required, obviously. I've seen some real nightmares up for sale:

(I should note that there's a question coming at the end)

I present the following to you without explanation or context. It needs neither.

Like I needed a new obsession.

On Friday afternoon, Jacob introduced me to Penrose tilings, which were entirely new to me. I was completely fascinated, running off in a multitude of directions to learn about things like 'aperiodic tilings' and tile patterns in Islamic architecture, and by Saturday I was hooked.

My quote from yesterday: "I think I accidentally made a quilt top today." The short story: I did something to my right leg on Saturday - seems like a minor quadriceps strain - and since Jeff was out of state all weekend, I opted to stay home and stay off my leg to let it rest.

Idle minds...

...find the equilter scrap bag and say, OOOOH I WONDER WHAT TROUBLE I COULD GET INTO -- LOOK! COLORS!

Thirty minutes later, I had the entire bag of scrap strips (maybe 3-4 pounds out of the original 5-pound bag?) spread out over the table. I'd been looking at photos of string quilts anyway, and I knew that's what these strips should be used for. One thing tends to lead to another, and when I next looked up, I had them all sorted out by color. (Also, I had Tenzing's undivided attention.)

This is not a real update. This is a set of three photos carefully constructed as a plausible update.

This is the next-to-last night I'll have to work on Das Blinkenlights, as I have a four-hour appointment with a longarm quilter on Saturday morning. Regardless of what the quilt thinks, she's going under the needle on Saturday because Sheila is NOT getting any less pregnant by the day.

I recognize that St. Patrick's Day, the day of gluttonous boozahol-ing, is perhaps the wrong day to announce this, but I would like to make a proclamation to my friends: STOP HAVING SEX. I know it's fun and all, but Tenzing wants you to know that he can no longer churn out the baby quilts fast enough to keep up with my rapidly-multiplying set of friends, because you know what it's driven us to do? Yep: take a longarm quilting class.