The Anti-Beige League

I had just sat down to begin this WIP Wednesday post (thanks Tami for hosting and organising!) when Partner walked past the study door. ‘I’ve just seen the woman from a couple of doors down walking past our house’ he said, thoughtfully. (Because we are a terrace, we have a path through our back garden that the neighbours walk through, and it is sunny and also bin day tomorrow so everyone is roaming about). ‘I’d only gone into the kitchen to get a magazine. She looked a bit surprised to see me’. I looked round the door and Partner is completely naked and on his way to the bath, so if you see a headline in the Daily Mail about Cambridge Academic Arrested for Public Nudity, Neighbour Receiving Counselling you will know who it is and you can imagine me shaking my head in despair and eating biscuits frantically. Anyway let’s get on with the things I wanted to show you. What do we want pictures of when the sun shines, we want pictures of colourful things, which is excellent as here I am tie-dyeing and quilting and managing to free-motion machine quilt without a/ a darning foot, b/ any natural ability, or c/ anything you ought to have ideally, so, go me.

Why yes that is Jilly Cooper you can see on that bookcase. I am an Intellectual

This is my mum’s quilt, do you remember we had the border conversation? Thank you for everyone’s brilliant suggestions. I went with navy, and to my delight they had some navy reduced at Cottonpatch so that confirmed me in my choice (I think I will do the binding a different colour, though). I’m thinking it works, what do you think? Since I mentioned my mother’s liking for beige, I am slightly concerned to report that she has gone into Mad Beige Overdrive and is buying up beige things right, left and centre. I cannot see how she can possibly like this quilt, I cannot see it. Anyway, someone will have it, so I am cutting out squares for the back at the moment. The back has a special theme. It is, ‘random fabrics that are big enough for Susie to cut 10 1/2 inch squares out of’, so you can see that with a coherent and well-thought-out theme like that it is going to look fabulous.

I bet you all iron your duvet covers. I feel inadequate. Ours has got all its buttons missing as well

This is my previous quilt, you may remember it. I am showing it to you in situ to prove how much I use it. When I made it and finished it, I thought, what am I actually going to do with this thing now, but actually I use it all the time. It is on the bed at the moment (I fold it over so it is only on my side as Partner’s core temperature is about 50 degrees higher than mine) but, I sometimes sit in the evenings and think, what I need now is a quilt to put over my legs. Which brings me to:

I can do patterns that are not spirals, yes I can. I can do stripes

This is hot off the press and I haven’t ironed it yet, but it is the centre panel for the next quilt I am going to make. I haven’t decided yet if it’s going to be a lap quilt or a wallhanging, but I’m thinking some kind of double pieced strip border and possibly incorporating non-cotton (but washable) fabrics. I haven’t quite decided yet. And today I have also been making this cushion.

Grey and pink = ironic juxtaposition. I am a one-trick pony

It’s made from ties and old scarves and actually, do you know, I really like it. I’m going to make a couple. I experimented with free-motion squiggly quilting on one of the panels:

The skill is in not losing your nerve, that is all, it is like Life

And it was really easy. For readers who quilt, all I did was, I lowered the feed dogs on my machine and I took the foot off completely (you are supposed to use a darning foot but it worked fine for me with no foot at all). Then you just move the fabric around (this makes sense when you are doing it), and try to keep your lines as curvy as possible and not cross them. I’m not sure I could do a bed-size quilt like this, but perhaps I could – it does seem to bunch less, and I like the effect. I have realised, reading round other quilting blogs, that people do actually send their quilts away to be quilted and do not struggle through the horror themselves. I think this makes absolute sense, because actually it’s not that easy and I’m sure a professional with a long-arm machine is the way to go, but I think I will persevere through at least a few more myself because I like the catharsis when I have finished. I feel like Mrs Doyle when Father Ted bought her the teamaker: maybe I like the misery. Hey, at least it’s only quilting I have an unhealthy and slightly masochistic emotional relationship with, and I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a self-help book called Women Who Quilt Too Much. So it must be absolutely fine.

For other WIP Wednesday posts, go and have a look at Tami's blog and as ever, be impressed by the creativity out there in blogland!