so, the quilt was finally finished, just in time for me to wash and dry it before my trip! it was delivered to its recipients last night, after a delicious dinner of roast chicken, greek-style mashed potatoes, and brownie sundaes. unfortunately, i had no real means of wrapping the quilt, and it seemed wasteful to buy a gift bag, so it was presented rather unceremoniously in a bryn mawr college campus bookshop bag. eh.
so, here it is, in all its completed, quilted, fully-bound glory:
all the fabrics shrank just the right amount in the wash, giving it that oh-so-perfect crinkly quilt look and feel. and the fish, seahorses, and octopi are just as cute post-spin cycle!
this was the first quilt that i’ve bound in a true quilt-binding style, so i was a little nervous about how it would turn out. it certainly took eons, and my poor fingertips were quite sore at the end, but i think the binding turned out beautifully, and the bright orange really sort of pulls the colors together and brightens up the pale-blue that dominates the front.
and, of course, i had to include one of my nifty tags!
i’m so incredibly happy with this quilt. it feels like the first “real” quilt i’ve made because each and every square was pieced together, because i used real batting, instead of just backing it with polar fleece, and because i made a real binding and sewed it on by hand. and while it’s not the first quilt i’ve given as a gift, the fact that it’s a baby gift for a dear friend makes it extra-special and meaningful.
in the end, despite the lack of wrapping paper and sappy cards, both parents-to-be were very touched and grateful, and when i woke up this morning, tristan informed me that last night, as he lay in bed falling asleep, he was thinking of the quilt. in his own words: “i could see the baby on the quilt.” it doesn’t get any better than that.
progress is being made on the quilt, slowly but surely. more slowly before, more surely now. there’s only a week before i head to boston, which means i’ve got to start haulin’ a little quilting ass. so here’s what i’ve got so far:
all the squares as they'll be laid out in the quilt
the first two rows are complete!
here are a few of my favorite squares:
seahorses and octopi
ants and octopi
fish and bugs
fish and octopi
apparently i really like octopi. here’s why.
Filed under: crafts
a new quilting project has begun!!!!
my friend laurel is pregnant (i believe she will be close friend #3 to birth a child, friend my age #2). this is weird, but quite exciting. so, of course, a quilt must be made. i had dreams of making this quilt all organic, given laurel and her husband’s inclinations towards such things, and my love of all things green. but alas, organic fabric is either boring as dirt or crazy-expensive. so then i considered making a scrap quilt, which wouldn’t be organic but wouldn’t involve purchasing anything new. while this would appeal to both of our sensibilities, as well as my general lack of all things monetary, alas, i don’t really have enough scraps to generate any sort of cohesive color scheme. soooooo….
i gave in/indulged myself and went to spool, one of the gosh-darn loveliest places in this fair city, and bought oodles of adorable fabric in what i consider to be a gender-neutral color scheme. here’s a sneak peek (in very poor lighting):
these six fabrics (minus the cat) will be combined in various ways to make 12 different pinwheel squares, which will be arranged in a grid on top of a pretty heather blue background:
then comes my favorite part, the backing:
for the binding i have a super bright orange fabric, similar to the orange in the fish and the seahorses.
i can’t wait to start piecing together my pinwheel squares! hopefully there will be updates soon.
no real craft-y updates for you. working on a pretty little scarf, but no pictures yet. i’ve been busy with GREs and work and editing projects. i’ve also been rediscovering my diaryland site, which i kept up for a year or two between 2000 and 2002. that’s right, i was a blogger before anyone even knew what bloggers were. we were all doin’ it back in those days, and for a long time it was important to me to be able to follow what my friends were up to once we all went our separate ways into academia. but of course my devotion floundered, and alas, the site was abandoned. now you can’t even read the entries anymore (apparently my amateur experiments with html weren’t so successful in the long run), but i’ve managed to salvage some from the members page, and i’m compiling a crazy-long word document. so far i’m already on page 48, and i’ve only covered my first semester of college. yowza.
don’t worry, i won’t subject all my semi-angsty post-teen blabbing on you, but i do think that from time to time i’ll share one or two that i find particularly amusing or thought provoking. there will probably be more of the former than the latter, given what i’ve re-read so far.
so without further ado, here is your first gem:
2000-12-13
15:07:33
Behold the power of feet
Last night, I was doing my laundry in the spacious basement laundry room that is supposed to be for the upperclassmen in the adjacent building but which I so stealthily discovered. This spacious laundry room not only has six washers and six dryers (as opposed to the puny four in our laundry room), but the dryers are the cool kind with windows in the front, so that you can watch your clothes spin ceaselessly as they dry. It’s a good time, I assure you. Beats studying for finals, anyway. </P><P></P><P>So, I was sitting with my barefeet against the dryer window so that they could absorb the heat, and I was watching my jeans and my red handkerchief and my cow socks chase each other around. And I noticed the tattoo on my right foot, and started thinking about how it will always be there, even when I’m forty and sitting in my house somewhere, with a family and a job and hopefully some semblance of a life. And I started to wonder if, when I was noticing my tattoo as a forty year old, I would remember sitting in that laundry room and watching my clothes spin. And it made me really sad, because in twenty years I might not remember little events like that, and they’re the ones I enjoy most. Leaning my feet against a hot dryer and watching my clothes spin. Walking down Thayer St. in the freezing cold with my friends and laughing like crazy. Watching Seth and Claire wrestle and kick at each other, and watching Claire win. Those are the times when I stop and think about how much I really like it here, and I’m worried that those are the times I won’t remember. </P><P></P><P>I hope in forty years I can look at my tattoo and remember sitting in that dirty old laundry room, and be able to feel the heat of the dryer on the bottoms of my feet, and remember that even though I was exhausted and I had endless amounts of studying to do, I was really content to just sit there and watch my clothes. Hopefully, after thinking and writing about it, it will be one of those silly little memories that never leaves me.
end.
want to hear something funny? i’d totally forgotten all about that moment and everything i thought at the time until i rediscovered this entry. sigh. so much for preserving funny wacky little memories.
and for any of you old-school diarylanders who are interested (i’m talking to you, little miss cocoa), you can still access your old pages on diaryland. and the site still looks exactly the same as it did way back when. pastel purple till you puke! yay for some things never changing!
Filed under: Uncategorized
my purpose is to make quilts.
sigh. if only it were that easy. making quilts is way more fun than summarizing my professional experience and life goals in 750 words or less. don’t you think that if i could do that, my experience and goals wouldn’t be all that worth writing about?
so instead i blog about crafts. yay for me.
here’s the quilt i made for dave and alli. i was very pleased with how well it came out. way less wonky than quilt # 1, which means i’m getting better! huzzah!
you can’t tell from the pictures, but i quilted it by sewing over some of the major seams, then stitching a large guitar shape over the whole thing. it’s subtle, but it came out really well.
the back is polar fleece, just like my last quilt, only i added this special little detail, because dave and alli love their otters so much.
this is how much nino loved the quilt.
caught in the act!
the final product. cat sold separately.
this is maybe the best part! i got these labels from jennifersjewels on etsy, and i’m officially in love with them. not only are they a little bit rock n’ roll, but they make all my projects seem more professional. plus they’re super easy to iron on, as long as the iron isn’t too hot (learned that one the hard way!).
now i want to go back and retroactively label everything i’ve ever crafted.
making my own napkins and loving it 