… of developing a brand new quilt based on the colors of the blanket, I’m making more hexagon-ish units to for a lap quilt that started out with this star. My one problem with piecing a quilt is that it really makes me want to buy more fabric, regardless of whether I need it or not. And I’m kicking myself that I didn’t save the selvage for a couple of the fabrics I’m using, like the one with the green swirling floral design… I will never be able to find it again, even if it is findable.
It takes me forever and a day to come up with color schemes for quilts. So I decided I will try to record things with color combinations I like. This blanket, for example, which belongs to a friend I visited with E. E thereafter walked off with a container of lentils that she played with while my friend and I chatted. (She subsequently brought home that container of lentils without my noticing.) But the colors of this blanket: so clean. As soon as I saw it I knew I’ll want to use this color combination in a quilt design.
There’s this pile of stuff on my work table. It’s a different pile every night. Daytime is when I can do emails, with wholesalers, friends who give me ideas, family, anyone. When I acquire supplies. Nighttime? I sew. We’re getting ready to do a Kickstarter. But that means there are more samples to be sewn, friends sought out and begged for a favor, solutions found, plans laid and finalized, a video made, photographs. I would be anxious if I weren’t so sleepy all the time. Having children has really taken a lot of my anxiety away: I don’t have the time! But then, why would I be anxious: life is good, I get to try and build something I enjoy so, so much. My only regret: I make samples most nights, which leaves no time to make anything else. And I have such dreams of quilts I want to sew.
[Update, due to forgetfulness: this post needed a title so it got one the day after...]
Can you tell that my business associate in Hungary, on skype on my computer screen, also has a baby on her lap. This really is a business meeting, despite the puzzle pieces lying about. I’m so glad that my business partner from here in the U.S. took this picture because I’m sure that in a year’s time I won’t believe it’s possible to discuss anything at all while simultaneously having to come up with yet another thing to keep a baby out of your hair. I mean that literally. Apparently both these babies are really into hair. In the photo, mine is distracted by the Little Mole again… And my business associate’s baby is exactly 3 seconds away from trying to tear his mother’s earrings off. My theory: these babies will make really good civil rights protesters someday: they can twist themselves out of anyone’s hands without getting hurt, as fast as lightning. Well, good on them! Still, let’s hope Hungary’s situation improves before our babies have to exert themselves in that arena. In the meantime, today I realized yet again that I am working with some amazing, wonderful women, and how much I love that.
[I wrote this then promptly forgot about it and left it in drafts. It's short and way 'overdue' but I'm publishing it for the sake of some form of completeness.]
They’re learning how to play together. Work together. They mean well, too well sometimes: E would keep trying to give Z something Z is done playing with and Z will protest, exasperated, feeling misunderstood. Or Z tries to put a scarf, a sweater, a blanket on E saying, I have to put this on you so you won’t be cold, and E runs away, screaming. They’ll learn, they are learning. There are more and more moments like the one in the pictures, when they get an idea, together, and then they do it, together.
I forgot to post last night and nearly forgot today. It was a busy day again. After it was done the apartment looked like the cavalry hit. Or a tornado. Maybe both. But it was just the result of a constant effort to had the children something to keep them occupied so that we could finish some drafts that need to be sent off together with fabric samples tomorrow. At least, the fabric samples we actually need didn’t get mixed up with the scraps, tiny cookware, Duplos, crayons and bits of origami paper that are the children’s property. They spend a lot of time packing, unpacking, wrapping, repositioning, rewrapping all of it. Making off with the fabric samples would be an honest enough mistake. After all was said and done I finally sat down to finish a quilt I should have finished many months ago. I am almost ashamed of this, except I honestly didn’t figure out how to quilt it until last week. (The only thing I’m ashamed of is that I’m actually THAT slow in figuring this out.) And then I did not have the requisite number of uninterrupted hours during which I’m awake to actually DO the quilting. Until tonight that is.
After getting to the end of what one planned to do, there is always the question: now what? I like how the star below turned out but now I wish I’d fussy cut some of it. I said yesterday I planned to make miniquilts but now I wonder if I couldn’t make something bigger out of this. Maybe use this as the center star and build outwards with larger triangles? And up to how large should I keep going? Z said that E needs a new quilt. So there you go: crib-size. But then Z said she needs a new quilt herself, and proceeded to go through my fabrics to get things started. It turns out I don’t possess enough pinks.
Since for work I mostly make stuff, I relax by – you guessed it – making more stuff. Just different stuff. I really love quilts and have been slowly learning how to make them. A friend lent me this book and I had the idea to make one of the quilts out of it (one called ‘Jazz Hands’). But since I don’t have time for a long-term project and lately, I’ve been getting discouraged by unfinished stuff I have lying around. So I decided to make just one block and finish it as a miniquilt. Not exactly as usable but much, much faster. While piecing away at it I made the discovery that the quality of one’s tools really do influence the quality of one’s work. I don’t mean how good the finished products is but what it feels like to work on it. The quality of the process, as it were. See, my iron died two days ago and with much trepidation I replaced it with one that costs more than 20 dollars. A fair amount more, actually. I’ve never had an iron that cost more than 20 dollars. Who knew it made such a difference? Seams lie flat with just one light pass with it. (Can you tell I never iron my clothes?) Finally Y-seams are not just possible but actually easy. And, apparently, my daughter Z gets her fondness for all things girly and floral from me…
Lately I’ve been amusing myself with making clothes with vintage patterns. Ones from the late 1920s and early-to-mid 1930s are my favorites. There was such elegance to cuts of the period, to the draping of fabric, and – last but not least – to the pattern illustrations. Although I must say the patterns themselves are not my favorites. They’re filmy thin, unprinted (which is fine) but this makes copying them onto usable paper is more of a chore than usual because the unprinted edges are kinda hard to see. On the other hand? You’re free to do with them as you please: reproduce them, sell clothes made of them, publish them anywhere you like. They’re old enough to be, mostly, out of copyright. Isn’t that cool?
Today was strange. Well… technically it was yesterday that was strange, which means I missed the deadline for today’s photo and post, but in much of the U.S. it’s still yesterday so I’m going to act like this still counts. Everyone woke up really early then went back to sleep and woke up really late. Like unheard of, 10:30 in the morning late. Breakfast was really brunch late. We scrambled to get everyone dressed and off to preschool and their nap. See, Z goes to preschool in the afternoon because she doesn’t nap but E does so it made more sense to just have both in the mornings then have a couple hours of quiet in the afternoon. She told us two days ago that none of her friends at preschool nap either. Which explains why her friends are all older than her – Z started the no-nap schedule kind of on the early side, when she was two years old, right after E was born. I suspect that last fact has something to do with it but I have very hazy recollections from that period in our lives. I just know there wasn’t very much sleeping going on. And it was all kind of odd later too: my iron died all of a sudden and then the cat got obsessed with a doll and kept licking and biting its hand. Anyway. It’s late now and tomorrow will be another long day.
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