The Story of the Beast With Those Four Dirty Paws

Well, Quiltpocalypse Weekend is upon us! Things actually went a lot more smoothly than expected, but then again, I was expecting chaos. I got six blocks done today, which leaves me only three more to go. (And then I have to do the backing, and binding, and then the actual quilting itself.)



My sisters actually finished the fronts of their quilts today:



(Seen here with miscellaneous pets.)

At some point we ended up in a conversation about "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," and about how it is basically about him being mopey because he is getting old and disillusioned and women don't pay him much attention anymore. (Probably, one of my sisters posited, because he is no longer a hot young stud and, being English, has bad teeth. This on top of the early twentieth-century casual misogyny and racism, it's no wonder the ladies in the room prefer to come and go, talking of Michelangelo.) But it has some nice imagery.

So, I'm making a quilt. This is a thing that I am really doing.

A few weeks ago while my grandparents were visiting, one of my sisters asked my grandmother, who is an experienced quilter, for help making a duvet cover for her bed in her new apartment. I offered to contribute my sewing machine in case they needed an extra one, but suddenly my mother jumped all over this and thought wouldn't it be great if me and my sisters all made a quilt together with Mom-mom. Not working together on one quilt, as I was hoping she was getting at, but ALL THREE OF US each making a separate quilt. Three projects, in one house, on one weekend.

Now, I've always wanted to make a quilt, and I think this is a lovely idea in theory, but in practice I think it's going to be a huge stressful mess. I offered to help either of my sisters with their projects, since I have both a sewing machine and experience with it, but my mom got angry and accused me of not wanting to build my own memories with my grandmother. Then she started guilting me about it, stressing how much of a "memory-building experience" this would be and also how my grandmother is not going to be around forever, because the women of my family have raised passive-aggression and guilt tripping to an art form.

Unable to convince her that I do want to make a quilt and some memories with my grandmother, just not at the same time and with the same sewing machine as everyone else, I picked out some fabric and now I am making a quilt. I did get permission to get a head start, so I am trying to get as much done as I can before the Great Quilting Weekend (this weekend) arrives so I at least have the hang of it by then.

I got all the pieces cut out a few weeks ago but put it on hold to finish this and this, in an effort to cut down my number of ongoing major projects. Today I laid out and planned all the squares, a process my grandmother calls "auditioning".



You can get a vague idea of what it's going to look like in the end. The pattern is called "Lucky Stars," which you probably can't tell right now, but the small triangle pieces are going to be the star points. Getting all the blocks organized - making sure that I didn't repeat a pattern in each square, trying not to have too many solid pieces or pieces with distinctive patterns or polka dots or what have you close together, getting the right colour balance - was very puzzly.

And then I had to pick them all up because I can't keep them laid out on my bed, haha. I took several pictures so hopefully I will be able to put them back together as perfectly as I had them laid out.