blockage continues

i'm still here. life has just been a little too real lately. my mother is coming to visit in 2 weeks. and mary has been hysterical over the state of the the house. well, it is kinda messy. we are messy people. we have books and dog toys and quilty stuff and rubber stamp stuff and too much furniture and no storage. so yes, the place is messy. but let's face it. given my track record for clutter, it's a paradise. so not only have we gone through every closet, box, and bag in the house, but we've moved most of the furniture (some of it several times)and dusted and vacuumed enough to give mary an asthma attack. she still is worried about it looking like a trailer. but it is a trailer. and when the directions to your house include "the doublewide in the trailer park behind the cracker barrel, you know, the one just off the highway"...well it pretty much screams trailer trash. but it's really a "modular home" in a "modular home community." and my mother will not care.

now, my asshole brother and his perfect wife, that's going to be something different. my dear, sweet, clueless mother invited them over for sunday dinner. i thought mary was going to spit! hell, i was, and may still spit. we are going to have to entertain them, heck, figure out where everybody is going to sit. 2 on the couch, 1 each in the 2 rockers. somebody gets the desk chair. and if the kid comes, somebody has to stay in the car!

the silver lining in this familial black cloud is that it gives me a dead line. i work best under pressure. i have to get the living room curtains finished, curtains for my room have suddenly become and issue, a slip cover for the dog's chair, something quilty (one of the vatne family quilts maybe) on the wall, and something really hot looking in progress in the sewing room. unforturnately only a few of these things are doable. living room curtains - they are all cut out and i just need to sit down for a day and hem. ditto curtains for my room. slipcover - don be rediulos, i've never made a slip cover in my life and don't plan on starting now. that's what catalogs are off (i see really expensive nextday shipping charges in my future).

something quilty on the wall - i have 4or5 30's quilts made 2 generations back by the women of my mother's stepfather's family, the vatne's. most of them are pretty worn, but there is a grandmother's flower garden that looks like it was never used. my favorite is eight pointed star blocks, small (14x14 or so) alertnating with white (well, off white blocks now) lots of quilting. and very faded. the stars are red, faded down to a coral now. i think it's older that the 30's be don't really know. the appeal of this quilt is that isn't perfect. it's hand pieced and the diamonds of the star points are a little crocked. the quilting is a little big and uneven. one side of the binding has been replaced with bright red and machine stitched cotton/poly (i'm guessing) and the machine stitching is in white. someone's first big quilt maybe? a ufo finally finished? loved and used even though it wasn't perfect. keep even though it had be be repaired? i wish i knew its story. anyway. a not perfect quilt to go on the wall of the not perfect house for when the perfect sister-in-law comes... sound like a plan? i know i sound petty, but really, she buys cheap overseas knockoff quilts!

How I started quilting: a story involving pain, plaster and PBS

I broke my leg. On a dull, gray day in January 1990 I fell in a snow covered church parking lot while hurrying in to go to the funeral of the father of a friend. We were running late. Going anywhere with Mary means we will be late. Mary was 6-7 feet in front of me, and I was trying to walk fast, but not being very nimble (bad ankle already, and a deformed foot) not only was I not gaining on her, I was losing my balance. It's very strange, I remember that part very clearly. I started to tip, my right foot kind of dragging behind but stupidly I tried to keep walking, my right foot ended up behind my left one, and basically I tripped myself. I lie there on the packed snow looking up at the clouds thinking "just kill me now". It didn't really hurt but I knew I had messed up big time. Mary didn't notice a thing. And I would probably still be laying there if the ushers at the church door had seen me go down and came rushing out. They hauled me into the church, put a baggy full of snow on my ankle, Mary gave me a big dose of motrin, and then I hopped down the stairs and got loaded into the car and Mary took me back to kazoo and the hospital. Where I finally got a big pain shot and and, after a day, an ORIF.

then I went home with Mary. It being the smartest place to stay, my house being essentially impassable due to clutter. So there I was, one leg in a big plaster cast up on pillows, too fat and full of arthritis to be able to hop around easily on crutches and bored out of my mind before. I watched TV. I watched a lot of TV. I very carefully avoided the talk shows and soaps, there lay addiction. I knew if I got hooked I would spend the rest of my life as a slave to Phil Donahue. That didn't leave a lot (this was 1990 remember) and somehow, alternating between cartoons and mtv, I started watching public TV during the day time when the school instruction shows were on. It's amazing how pretty physics looks with animation and painkillers. Then I started watching PBS on Saturday.

Kaye Woods was my first quilting teacher. I don't remember exactly what she made, but I decided to give it a try. I sent Mary out for needle, thread and material. She was a little worried about picking that out but I told her blue, and she came back from joanne's with a pretty little blue calico and a white. Using a ruler, the household scissors, a pencil and cardboard temples, I cut cut a nine patched, sewed it by hand, and then quilted the white patches. I must have had a book by the time I got the the quilting, but I don't remember. i finished off my little ninepatch block into a cover for the hot water bottle.

Quilts! Quilts! Quilts! was probably the first quilting book I bought. I've always told people I thought myself to quilt with that book. And it's true. Most of the quilts I made my first 3-4 years came from it. I still watched Kaye and added Georgia Bonesteele, bought more books, many, many books, rulers, cutters, all the quilting paraphernalia. And material, which I had learned to call fabric by this time. I took one class. And finally with much trepidation, joined a guild.

the library guild was almost the classic cliche of little old lady quilters. It meet during the day, most of the members were housewives who no longer, or never had worked outside the home. It was small, never more the 25-26 members at it's peak, and very traditional. But they were a killer bunch of quilters and I learned a lot. And I finally could call myself a quilter without a mental blush at my audacity.

yet another reason

the dog! the dog is another reason why i'm not sewing. i have to babysit the dog, who, if he's left alone would get into big trouble. papers and books and garbage would be involved.
doesn't he look so sweet and innocent? well, he is named bandit for good reason, not just because he looks like jonny quest's dog. he is a wild child. and he likes it that way.

quilter's block

I am so tired my eyes will not stay focused, so it's a pass on just how clear my thinking is right now. But as to why I'm not making quilts:

1. Laziness - having troubling getting up off the couch. Blame it on the catapres, crappy schedule, just plain lack of ambition, poor work ethic

2. Too ambitious - not really the opposite of number one but that kinda comes from it as part of the problem is just getting started. The quilts I have ideas for but either don't have the techniques for or the planning skills for could fill a book. The star trek quilts, the stargate quilts (more on those later), the camera quilts. Not to mention the regular garden variety traditional ones for babies, friends and family. Oh and katrina quilts. The applique project that is so stalled I'm not even sure where it is right now.

3. Shy - god bless Mary. She opened her home to me, let me remodel it so I could have a sewing room, but she wants to watch and I don't really want an audience. Especially when it isn't going well. I know that sounds so petty, but I can't help it.

Saturday morning

Right now this is more of a quilts I want to make blog, than an actual quilts I have made blog, seeing how I haven't made anything in a while...Well, quite a while. The sewing room is done, the fabric and stuff is slowly being moved out of storage. My schedule give me a week off every 2 weeks, so why aren't I quilting up a storm?