quilts

The things we carry

Submitted by domesticat on 19 February 2010 - 8:34pm

He made me promise.
"One for you."
"Yes. I promise."

I bought the pattern - 'Bricks and Stones' in her parlance, 'the white librarian' in mine, and after resizing and redrafting, I knew it was time to do something unusual.

['The "White Librarian" -- plans']

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bright, bubbly, bawdy

Submitted by domesticat on 19 February 2010 - 12:36am

I haven't sewed much this week. Getting ready for Wednesday's rollout at work consumed most of my energy; by the end of each night, all I wanted to do was turn into a little couch lump. Dragging myself to the sewing machine wasn't a high priority; rest and antacids were.

It still feels a little strange, knowing that I'm actually keeping this quilt once it's done.

['Each by each']

This quilt is surprisingly personal. The fabrics were all gifts specifically for me, or have other personal meanings. I mean, c'mon, there's a print about brassieres and a print about sexual positions. It's a bright, bubbly, and bawdy little thing. Of course I'm keeping it.

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Where's your sash, Miss America?

Submitted by domesticat on 25 January 2010 - 11:35pm

Definitely progress. It lacks horizontal sashing, and the final border, but this is very nearly a finished quilt top:

['Where's your sash, Miss America?']

I learned some things along the way. If I'm going to do this again, I need to be really careful about pieces bowing inward in the middle. I also need to make my last stripe fairly substantial, so that I don't trim most of it away when cutting it down to the finished size.

Offset squares are good. Uneven is good. Some of the squares weren't quite big enough, and I had two choices; add another round, which would then get trimmed down, or use extra background fabric and end up with deliberately mismatched square sizes. I opted for the latter. I liked the thought of it being a little homey and uneven.

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quilts

Too sleepy to sew

Submitted by domesticat on 24 January 2010 - 5:25pm

Sunday afternoon. I've done almost no sewing this week; I've been mentally drained out of proportion to my actual physical tiredness. Jeff and I took our first stab at geocaching yesterday with mixed results, but we intend to try again; today we caught a morning matinee of 'Sherlock Holmes' and then made a quick grocery run before heading home.

Jeff sleeps right now, having stayed up a good chunk of the night while the storms were rolling through. The cats, fed, are hunting for warm places to nap. A good Sunday, overall.

I am nearing the time of final assembly on Lost in Translation, which is now definitely Tim's quilt. I've decided to make a great, grand usage of the last of the fabric I've been using for the square centers; I'll post photos when I have them.

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Quilt planning: the two librarians

Submitted by domesticat on 18 January 2010 - 12:24pm

I'm starting to lay groundwork for a quilt that I'm making -- get this! -- for myself. I promised Jacob that I would use at least part of his fabric presents to me to actually create a quilt that I would keep for myself. It's taken on a life of its own, though: it's actually going to be my first two-sided quilt.

The catch is that it's about me. Both sides of me. In our friendship we've created shorthand terms for those sides: the 'white librarian' and the 'red librarian.' The side that's publicly presentable, and the other side that's only seen by people I'm close to. The good side and the naughty side. I love the idea of having a quilt that was pretty and filled with all the things I love -- and then on the reverse, also pretty and filled with other things I love.

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Hey, do you suck?

Submitted by domesticat on 12 January 2010 - 10:31pm

So, if you'd asked me the question even up until a few days ago, I would have said the answer was yes! Over the past year or so, I've been trying to find a few quilt blogs to read, quilt blogs of people whose sense of color and design interested and challenged me, and let me tell you -- these blogs were killing my spirit.

Not just killing my spirit, but resurrecting it and smacking it around again just to really get the point across. These women -- for, let's be honest, I've picked the only hobby more female-dominated than my current employer** -- were cranking out quilts like nobody's business. Yes, they're machine quilting, but I kid you not, every few days it was

O HAI I HAVE FINISHED ANOTHER QUILTZOR SEE I HAZ PHOTOS!

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