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Miracle On Burlington Path
Holy smokes, I can't believe I'm even saying this. I am almost completely caught up. Yes, you heard me right; I am almost completely caught up! It's like a miracle! Not a true miracle, of course, not like the Miracle of the Blessed Appearance of the School Bus, but a miracle nonetheless. You will be so shocked when you hear how caught up I am. Not half as shocked as me, but still.
The past year and a half has been a doozy, to say the least. My cancer came back, the ever-popular Mr. Kimmy needed a quadruple bypass, I got a stent in my heart, my thyroid got a little too much radiation and sprouted problems, and my kids went and turned into extremely busy teenagers while I wasn’t looking. When this much life attacks you all at once, you sort of fall behind a little bit, and I have been feeling totally behind the eight ball since early 2007, with ever increasing mounds of incomplete tasks piling up everywhere I look. This bugs the living daylights out of me, because I am one of those really irritating Martha Stewart types who must have everything just perfectly so at all times, and to have unfinished projects looming everywhere I turn is enough to make me break out in hives. I just *hate* not being caught up on things, and I have been soooooo not caught up it isn’t even funny. Until now. Now, I am almost caught up.
Now, you can’t laugh at me when I tell you this. I mean it. No laughing. Okay; I have these lists. Lists of things to do. I have my list of things that should be done this month, my list of things that should be done this week, and my list of things that really ought to be done today or tomorrow. During Times of Crisis and Traumatic Upheaval, like when the quilt guild is going to meet at my house or when I am hosting Thanksgiving, I make lists of stuff that needs to be done in the morning and things that should be done in the afternoon. I told you not to laugh. Anyway, during the past 18 months, my lists have been endless and annoying, mostly because nothing on them ever seems to get checked off. (and furthermore, I have been so behind on everything that my list-making got sloppy, and I wrote things in a type of shorthand that is now indistinguishable to me. For example, one of my list entries is “Amber 2422 Blue 2069” Now, what the hell do you suppose that means? If I no longer know what it means, do I still have to do it? What do the obsessive-compulsive listmaker rules say about such things?) However, last weekend, I noticed that I no longer have a list of things that need to be done this week. I have a list of things that should get done this month, but it’s a short list. And I have a list of things that should be done today or tomorrow, but it’s a *really* short list. And that’s when it hit me. I am almost caught up! See? Miracles do happen.
An example of this miraculous behavior is the fact that, this past weekend, I stitched the binding to the front of not one, not two, but three (3!) quilts! Three! Now, to fully grasp the immense gravity of this event, you have to understand that I loathe sewing bindings with every fiber of my being. When I get done with the quilting, I want that quilt to just be done. I do not want to go off and cut more strips of fabric, press them carefully with starch, and monkey around with proper application and such. I just want that quilt done. Because of this slothfulness, I have quilts that have been quilted for 4 years which still have no binding, and I am not one bit sorry about it, either. However, all that’s about to change, what with the New Me and all. I have resolved to bind all of my quilts, even if it kills me, which it probably will.
The first one to get a binding (well, sort of a binding, since I have only completed ¾ of the handstitching so far) was this little wallhanging, which was used as a class sample for my traveling classes, showing the faux trapunto effect you can get when you use a double layer of batting. (I just love the word ‘faux’. It’s so much classier than ‘fake’ and when I use it, I feel very French, instead of very lazy, which is what I am for not doing real trapunto. But I digress.) It has Hobb’s Heirloom as the bottom batting layer, and Hobb’s Polydown on top, which poofs up and fills up the motifs, giving the effect of trapunto without the work. I do have to admit that it looks quite nice with an actual binding on it. This quilt does not even sort of match any room in my house, so what I will do with it is anyone’s guess, but I feel awfully good about me now that it has a binding. Please disregard the giant fold lines. It has spent most of it’s little life in a suitcase, so it needs a good washing and those folds will fall right out.
This next one is also a class sample. I bought the top online from someone who was trying to clear out her stash of old fabric and unfinished tops. Oh, dear. Let me think of a way to put this nicely. It had issues. Lots of them. Even more issues than those has-been celebrities they put on that Surreal Life show, and that’s saying something. When quilting it, I used allover feathers as a demonstration of how the use of a lot of feathers can overcome a lot of issues. It worked pretty well, too. It was an ugly duckling that didn’t quack quite so loudly once it was done, if I do say so myself. It was hard to come up with a color for the binding, and I was fairly crabby during the color selection process, because as I may have mentioned in an earlier paragraph, I do not like bindings to begin with and having to stand around and be simultaneously tormented about proper color selection *and* proper binding application all at the same time seemed a lot like torture, but I was pretty happy in the end with how the white looks. Good Lord, there’s another endless run-on sentence. What would my English teacher think of me? Anyway, what do you think of the white? Should I have chosen a different color?
This last one is another of the Quilts of Valor that I am making to send to my friend Alycia the QOV Queen. At least I bind my QOVs in a timely manner, even if I do have poor grammar and use run-on sentences. Now that it’s almost done, I wish I’d have added some white or gold piping to the binding. That would have added a nice little ‘pop’, don’t you think? The red binding is nice, and adds some zing, but it would have been more zingy with some piping,
As soon as I finish the hand stitching on these quilts, I am going to <drum roll, please> stitch the binding on my Dresden Plates quilt that has been binding-free since 2002. Will wonders never cease?
This morning, I sat on my patio with my cup of coffee and enjoyed the fact that there was not one single kid in the neighborhood, and no matter how hard I listened, I could not hear the Big Butts song. It was wonderful. This afternoon, I found out my daughter has mono and will be home from school for a week. How fleeting are life’s little pleasures.
Maybe while she’s home, I can teach her how to stitch bindings. <she says, looking hopeful>
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1. Laurel (28 August 2008 at 5:59 p.m.)