It is possible that I am sewing too much. 

Last night my dreams were full of me having to hurry up and do whatever it was I was doing (stealing chewing gum from a hospital(?), smuggling my inflatable horse out of my hotel(?)) so that I could get back to sewing some more. And then this afternoon I found myself thinking, after I had gone to Spotlight to get some binding, that I wanted to go have a browse at Kmart, even though I didn't actually need anything, and when I asked myself why, I had to admit, grudgingly, that I was stalling on going home, because there was yet more sewing to be done.

Really, apart from going to the gym last night, and then to see Meagan at maccas, all I've done all holidays is sew. And yes, I know that was the point, and yes, Baby Shower gift is all done now, But I really really had to stop for a bit.

So while I was at Kmart, I bought a novel, called The Girl in the Steel-Capped Boots. It was... well, it was everything I thought it was going to be. Cliched, mainly, but that's not to say I didn't enjoy it. Main character, a newly graduated engineer, gets sent out to the edge of nowhere to help 350 blokes build a big jetty, overcomes all their sexist prejudices to win the affection of all and the heart of the gruff, sexy, mysterious head of the company that owns the jetty. Yay!

Still, for all that I knew the ending by page 24, it was a nice three hours away from the machine, and, time suitably taken off, I got to binding.

But, a step back in time. Had my internets not chucked a hissy fit last night, I could have shared with everybody the tribulations of Baby Shower Quilt #2.

See that missing triangle? It is supposed to be blue stripe. But you can only get 8 triangles from a fat quarter - not a problem with the red spot, since I had a spare 3 metres of it, but I needed 9 of the blue too. I had a similar stripe that I had put in there, but it was more aqua, and too close to the green, and I tried a red and blue spot, and a yellow stripe, and a blue check, but I didn't like any of them.

Solution? Change the direction the stripes faced and drop off the corners.

My first ever octagonal quilt. Bound in a yellow, terracotta and blown stripe that I absolutely adore for it's unashamed retroness. Backed in a red and white narrow seersucker stripe I had originally hoped to use for the front, but was too crinkly after washing. About 105cm at the wide bit.

And there's the back for the bright baby quilt - more HSTs.

I'm really loving HSts at the moment, clearly.

But which one do I actually give to Meagan? She said when I showed her the big bundle of pastels that she liked the idea of having a very babyish quilt, so that she could put it away when the baby got a big bigger in order to bring it out when it got a lot bigger. But she also liked the bright bundle, because it was bright.

I don't know.

Ow

Do other people get pin finger? Or are they smart enough to own and use a thimble?

Anyway, I obviously pinned too much last night (shoes get kinda thick) and now the tip of my index finger is all sore and it hurts too much to pin anything.

So, naturally, to ease my sorrow, I went shopping. I was looking for a red and white stripe to add to a potential bundle and found a nice one at Stitch and Knit.

That solid is an off-white. It looks yellow. Anyway, once I'd added the red stripe, I had to take out a blue and a green, because they didn't look right anymore. So I made them into a new bundle, which coordinates very nicely with some John Deere fabric I bought for a backing.

But it seems a bit boy-ish. As does this bundle of Groove fabrics I bought at Stitch and Knit - They were $10p/m with a 30cm minimum cut.

But really, I've got 5 days to make a gender neutral baby quilt and a sea of fabric-choice-indecision. So after I'd given up on making bundles and auditioning maths, I packed up for the night, before spontaneously deciding to sew together some of the HSTs that have been hanging about since I cut waay too many making the big pinwheel quilt. 

I've done some tentative maths, and I need more white. Which means I'll probably accidently buy lots yet again.

Slow and steady

HSTs are sewn. 

Now to make the most of three days off - get the last couple of bits of christmas shopping (mainly nice foods for the grandparents) done, and sew sew sew. Finish this quilt, bind the other christmasssy quilt, and make 3 bags for the sisters.

Look Ma, no curves!

The local Spotlight store is asking for customers to make 12 1/2 inch blocks on the theme of "Spring" from their fabrics to assemble into a charity quilt. Since I'm metric, I've made mine 33cm and told them they can trim them, and because I'm a massive rebel, I made a point of putting in a fabric that wasn't from Spotlight. Yeah, hardcore sticking it to the man, right?

Most of the fabrics are the leftover selvedge to selvedge strips from the two mini zigzag quilts, sewn together and then cut into triangles , half of which were put in one block, half on the other. Then you cut off the point with too many seams and put a triangle of a scrap of something you bought on fabric.com into the gap, so there isn't a massive bundle of seams in the corner when they go to piece it together, and you're showing them what an uncontrollable rebel you are at the same time.

I'm seriously considering doing a whole quilt like this. I'd probably put the same fabric as the edge strips into my corners though, so there was a neat circle in the middle. Well, technically not a circle, it'd probably be a dodecahedron or something, and I'd need to get my angle on my template a bit more precise than I did with these, where I didn't mind if I trimmed shitloads because it was scrap fabric anyway. But still, it's probably as close as I feel like getting to curved piecing, and it looks pretty cool.

I may have started to hyperventilate there...

The more I work on this quilt, the less sure I am of how the hell I'm actually gunna quilt it. And I really want it quilted as soon as I've finished piecing it - it's taken me too long already and I just want to wash it and be able to start using it.

I'm kinda wondering it there's some weird kind of balance between this quilt and my first one, which came about so effortlessly. This time last year, I was really getting into the stride of that quilt - come Sunday it will be a year since I completed it. That quilt happened really easily - unsurprising really since it was made by taking a massive pile of random 10cm squares and arranging them by eye on the kitchen table. I straight line quilted it in the ditch in one direction and folded the backing around to make a border. Nice and easy.

This one though, I'm not sure how I'm gunna do it. My tendency to go over every seam is overkill when they're going in 4 directions, but covering only two directions doesn't seem like enough.

I may have to send it off. I've never done that before. I don't like the idea of having to trust someone else to do justice to something I've put so much effort into. And will the lady at the quilt shop be okay with me saying "just a boring all over stipple, please"? And do I need to add extra to the front? Give it a border or something? Can I still do a pieced back? Will she get cross that some of my points are shoddy? How much will it cost me? Will she mind that all the fabrics are from Spotlight and not from her? Will she think I'm a sheep for using the DS fabrics? Will I embarrass myself even more by saying "yes, but even weirder, they're in the Joann's colourway" forever marking myself as a sad sorry loser with no life?

...

Just had to go look at my bag for a bit, remember how awesome I am. I feel a bit better now.

Back to the quilt, the good bits of it at least, the border pieces have all been cut and the short bits have been sewn on. Tomorrow night I shall sew on the long bits, Thursday night I shall piece it all together and on Friday, my day off, I shall take it and the brown one to Helen's to show her, because I've been too busy with work and trying to deal with actually having a social life* to visit, even though it makes me sad. Also, I haven't really had much to show off.

Maybe having no life wasn't so bad after all.

*in direct contrast to what you would expect of someone who knows which DS fabrics were released in which country, even though she doesn't really care about it and thinks that the internet's obsession with the designer in question does little more than make them look like sheep. Why can't my brain learn and retain useful things, like basic html? I'm sick of having to google whether it's or afterward. (I think it's the first one)

BIG plans.

It's interesting the series of emotions that can happen in an hour or so's progress on a quilt. After I split my HST units last night and ironed out the 112 I need for the big quilt, I thought that it didn't take me that long to iron them out, and it wasn't that bad. I was feeling optimistic that progress would maybe take twice as long as a usual quilt, and it should be a finished top in maybe 2 weeks. Tonight I looked at the little tiny pile of ironed squares and thought it was nowhere near big enough, and I looked at all the ones that have been put aside unironed for the smaller quilt, and I think, holy cow there's a lot there. So I worry, have I done my maths right, that seemed too easy, and shouldn't I have used more of them? There's too many left over. But I did do it right - there's one and a half times as many leftover ones as used ones but it seems like a lot more.

And then I got to cutting the slightly bigger ones. And seven strips being cut into 8 squares each took almost no time at all. Okay, it took over an hour. But it didn't feel like it. Cutting the big white bit into the same number of triangles probably took less time, but it felt like more. And now that they're all cut, and in a neat little pile, it looks as if there's a million billion of them and it will take me the rest of my life.

So I may as well wait till tomorrow to get started. That feeling I think is a mix between despondency and apathy. I anticipate it getting worse tomorrow as I sew them together, disappearing tomorrow night as I hit the town for town-hitting-practice with people from work, returning on the tails of a slight hangover, easing (hopefully) once I've pressed them all (assuming it goes as quickly and effortlessly as list night's 112) and drowning in a sea of alcopops as we properly get into town hitting on the Saturday night.

We have accepted the challenge laid down by mankini man. We are gunna back it up, two nights in a row, Woolies style. We may end up making a scene at Coles*

Expect a return to the nights of drunken rambly posts.

*for the non Australians, Coles are the rival supermarket. I plan on stealing their cardboard cutout of Curtis Stone so that we'll have a breeding pair with our cardboard cutout of Margaret Fulton.

Wednesday.

Some nights you just think... Gosh life is weird. Gosh life is brilliant. I'm so glad I'm me, because this was something worth experiencing.

Or you know, maybe it wasn't. But the fact that I get paid to stand around and laugh with a half dozen of the greatest ladies in the world, for all that I occasionally have to sell someone some cancer sticks, makes up for the fact that my crazy Wednesday nights aren't actually super crazy, by the standards of, say, Charlie Sheen.

There was a lot of the usual boringness earlier on. Busy afternoon, dinner from the fish and chip shop and sitting in my car so my phone could eek out some charge for it's flat batteries from the car charger. A much quieter evening, and then a guy tries to steal some smiley fritz (it's a processed sliced meat with a smiley face on it in a slightly different coloured processed meat - yummy)

I mean really. It was maybe $3 worth. He had it in his pocket, he took his hand out of his pocket, the smiley fritz falls out, he realises and tries to nonchalantly walk away very quickly, except Lauren has noticed and is damn near wetting herself with laughter. I suppose it's difficult to be nonchalant when you've just had your dastardly plan foiled by a spot of gravity.

Still, that's not an unusual occurrence. You work in a supermarket, people try to steal stuff. It happens. Far rarer is a man walking in, one a Wednesday night, in nothing more than one of those borat style mankinis with another, still quite small, pair of undies on underneath. Raised some eyebrows that one did. And then a half dozen of his friends came in, boys and girls, in similar states of undress. Keep in mind that as well as being the middle of the week, it's also averaging about 7°C here in the evenings. We called everybody from around the store to have a look. I've no idea what they were celebrating.

While they were wandering around, another customer handed one of our checkout operators a small bag of weed she'd found down an aisle. Probably less than an ounce, but still.

Normally when someone hands in lost property we try to find any clues as to it's owner and reunite them. And although we were pretty sure we knew who it belonged to, I'm not sure how you go about asking a group of near naked people if the semi-illegal drugs someone's just found belong to them. Or, for that matter how they go about proving it. A wallet, we can match your license photo to you. A phone, we can call home. But a bag of dope, um, well, I'll need a microscope, and some comparative samples. So we waited till they'd left (they bought some chocolate) and called the policeman, who gave me a receipt and said that he would "destroy it"

I'm thinking I might just hide the receipt in amoungst Mum's tax paperwork - she'll find it in a month when she goes to do the GST and be all confused.

After we closed we decided to all go to maccas. So the four of us sat and ate chips and nuggets and bitched and laughed for about an hour, till it was time for them to kick us out.

And after all this, while I was busy thinking I love Wednesdays because of crazy people in mankinis and bags of weed in the supermarket and late night trips to maccas, I forgot that I love Wednesday because White Collar has started again, so I only started downloading it 15 minutes ago.

In crafting news, I have pressed 16 HST units of each print - 112 in total. Tomorrow I shall cut and sew another 16 of each print, but bigger.

This is going to be a very slow pair of quilts.

Um...

It took me almost four hours to pair up the 280 half square triangle units. I am not looking forward to having to press them. Might have to do it over a few nights. *shudder*

What's more, I'm considering changing the design. I really really like the look of the brown one with the smaller and larger pinwheels. I was just going to sash it but that's quite dull. 2.5cm extra in the initial square size still makes it 5cm bigger in the pinwheel - for all that lots is lost to seam allowances in pinwheels, it's a fixed 5cm over the initial double width squares, even though my brain feels like it should be a scaled increase. So all I'd need to do is buy 15cm cuts of each of the prints and the same again in the white and I could replace half the blocks - I'd still finish up the pinwheels I've started - half would go in and the other half I could put on the back. Yes, technically, it would increase the amount of pinwheels I'd need to make by a half, but whatever.

Maybe I'm talking myself into just doing more work. But I figure, I'm going to be putting in a huge amount of work anyway. By a fair way, this quilt has the smallest pieces I've done so far, the most points and the most complicated piecing I've ever done. I don't want to have put in a huge amount of effort and get to the end and think to myself, well, that's a bit boring. I could have made that plenty more interesting. I don't even like sashing. I think it's too traditional for my tastes, and I'd really only chosen it because it meant I wouldn't have to match up the corner points. But it wasn't that hard to do the brown quilt.

I could come to regret it, trying to piece dozens of uncooperative pinwheel corners together, or I could end up regretting not doing it, and putting my most labour intensive quilt yet into a box because I'm not totally keen on it. I'm not sure which just yet.

Course, I may get a quarter of the way through ironing my HSTs, realise I still have over 200 to go, and fake my own death. That is always an option.

Love.

You know how some days you achieve a lot and some days you just write off in the knowledge that you're not going to achieve anything more quilty than popping one over your lap as you bum about on the couch?

Today was somewhere in between. Dad's been chopping down a lot of the trees around the yard in the past few days so my first few hours were spent helping haul branches onto trailers and utes, and since then I have been terribly stop-start-ish. I finished piecing the falling pinwheels quilt, in 15 minute spurts of effort that were about an hour apart.

And I bound the Mingle Star quilt, which is in the wash. I also ate 4 rolls of peppermint chocolate, quarter of a cheesecake, a can of tuna and two frozen apple fruit juice boxes, watched about a dozen episodes of QI, one of Hawaii 5-0 and two of Johnathan Creek, and read a novel. Which means even though I achieved a fair bit in quilting terms, I achieved far more in bumming about wasting time terms, which completely nullifies what I actually got done.

Think of it as a reverse of the "I've saved more money than I've spent" theory we've all used when justifying fabric purchases.

In other news, I would like to formally introduce everyone to the single most divisive rug in the whole of human history.

Is it the most awesome thing ever to be bought for $6.95? Or a hideous monstrosity? Does it look like brussel sprouts? Or broccoli? Or sea urchins? Do I love it more, or does Maddy?

Because Kelsey was the one who actually processed the sale of it from the local Lincraft store, I had decided that she couldn't get the ten points. But calling it a shag - well, that's genius, even if it is technically a mat and not carpeting. Ten points to Kelsey. Although I still don't know what I'm going to do with it - there's no bits of floor in need of a very unusual mat and I don't have the wall space to hang it, which is a shame. Even so: Love.

Brilliant

Well, it's still in bits but I've made progress to the point where it looks like a pinwheel quilt.

It was still at blocks at that point and I haven't made a huge amount of progress from there, as it turns out that it's really quite difficult to quilt and watch some truly excellent late 90s murder mysteries. You keep getting distracted looking for the clues, even when you've seen it before.

Nonetheless, if you're not quilting, I highly recommend a show called Jonathan Creek. Go for the earlier seasons though, they're a lot more fun - well, as fun as people dying interesting and unusual deaths can be.

Anyway, the quilt should end up at about 135cm square. And for the first time in ages I pressed a seam to the side - I've always been a seam splitter, I just think it looks so much nicer, but on the corners of the blocks with the borders it made a nasty bump where it folded over and over on itself, so there's two seams on each of the bordered blocks that are pressed differently. I just have to keep telling myself over and over that literally thousands of quilts are made every year with the seams pressed to one side, and they don't spontaneously fall apart, or acquire unsightly lumpen bits.

Speaking of lumpen bits, 10 points to whoever guesses what this is:

Whatever it is, it's bloody fantastic.

It's late.

I have ummed and ahhed about this for about 16 hours now - to the point where it is no longer Friday, and causing reference to the post a did a few weeks back about my love of procrastination. Hell, I could have even turned it into a post about my love of indecision (or could I?)

But, I have decided not to. It's not even going to be a post about QI, which is going to be tough since it's also been in my head for the last 7 hours or so, excluding times I went to the loo.

Nope, It'll be about sewing in the middle of the night, in a pretty much empty house. I don't know why I struggle so much with sewing in the presence of others, but it really makes it difficult. Much better to sew while everyone's abed, off at the pub, or on a boat somewhere.

I once said that having sex was like doing the dishes - that it was much more difficult to do if there was someone watching*. Maybe it's like a sliding scale, with dishes grudgingly doable in the presence of others, quilting only doable in the presence of others if they're not only not in your way but also not interested in you, and members of the opposite sex really only doable if there's either no-one around, or you're really, really drunk.

Anyway, tonight's sewing was the first I've done in nearly a fortnight. Half square triangles too, because I'm a freaking idiot and decided that the way I really wanted to get back into it was with some bloody pinwheels. And not just one pinwheel quilt, oh no, I need to prove I am much, much more hardcore than that, so I'm doing two pinwheel quilts at once. Different designs, measurements, fabrics and even thread colours. The second of the two, which I have so far only cut, has 240 half square triangle units, although admittedly, only 224 of these will be used - I sold out and bought six fabrics from the Denise Schmidt ones at Spotlight today. I only went in to see if they had a dark brown that could go with the Michael Miller Falling Leaves that I now have more of**.

20cm cuts don't get you that many good selvedges

Initial square sizes were 20cm and 17cm

Much preferred to the size of these - just 10cm

I must say, I really like the primo homespun they have at Spotlight now. It's so much better quality, there's almost twice as many colours at the local store and best of all, I go look at the colours in the store, and I get them home, and they're the same colour! For all that I love internet shopping, and yes, at $6.95 a metre it's technically more expensive than kona from fabricshack even with the postage, the fact that I can just see the colours, and buy the fabric, and take it home right then and there, that's good. And if sometimes I accidentally buy some fabric that I can't help but think to myself will spontaneously turn me into a sheep, well, that's a small price to pay.

Actually, for the 6 cuts of prints, 2.4 of white to go with them and the 1.5 of brown (which now that I've gotten home and refined the math for is about 30cm underestimated) the actual price to be paid was about $41. And that's forty one strong, robust Aussie dollars there too.




And now, I've spent almost 45 minutes without the reassuring, dulcet tones of Stephen Fry in my ears. I must be getting back to that.

*I really cannot explain why, but I really don't like doing dishes in the presence of other people - possibly I worry that a) they will think less of me or more likely b) they will now know that I can indeed do it, and expect me to do it again.
**Speaking of, if anyone wants a $5 coupon for fabric.com that needs to be used by the end of the month, message me - I really don't think I need it.