My current publicly acknowledged unfinished objects* are closer to being finished. Let’s not talk about the sweater quilt just now, it is my favorite, but sadly banned back to the sack until I feel it’s ok to spend a little money on the backing – I’ve determined it should be a grey cotton jersey sheet, but damned if I can’t find one cheap.
I am tired of the rug. I cut up the t-shirts so slip-shod and sheddy that I constantly sneezed as I braided, and my nose filled with buckets [shrew-sized] of lint – I also realized there are good tightly woven shirts that are best for projects such as this, and lousy loose ones – this is made up of mostly lousy. So I finished with the old balls that I had already cut up, and cut up one additional shirt more since I wanted a little more green in it. Then I remembered how much it sucks to sew these things up, and I can only do about 20 minutes at a time before my fingers are a bloody mess, my hands cramp up, or I’d rather be doing something else. The right needle and thread would make my life easier, but I don’t know quite what those would be, and I don’t want to buy anything, so sewing while wearing kitchen gloves and multiple thimbles is sort of doing the trick at the moment. I’m sure a heavy-duty sewing machine with a zig-zag stitch would work wonders…
(And I think I already mentioned I don’t really like the look of the “country style” home with braided rugs and too much barn red and faded blues… But then we just bought a house which fell through, and then another which also fell through and both could have used a washable rug in one area or another, so I will continue in the hopes that a third house might not actually fall through and it might still be needed, especially for our dog that isn’t ours yet, and might not exist yet either).
And the shirt quilt is trucking along at a slow but steady pace. If I put my mind to it, I could finish the top pretty quickly, but I don’t seem to have any control over my mind at the moment (I mentioned we keep buying houses that fail, right?). I also know I will soon face the dilemma of not having a suitable backing material and possibly not enough for binding, but I have the cotton batting so my future purchase should be limited to just the fabric. It seems that should be easy enough, right? I’d be happy with a solid color or slight pattern – certainly there should be some basic cotton stuff on sale out there somewhere…
Looks like a poster session at a rag-picker’s conference, eh? I get to play-act being a professional again, only at my own conference there are no numbers or words (not that I don’t like words, and I have a healthy respect for numbers) or snooze-inducing power-points and sweaty nervous speakers. Or maybe I am back at a science fair – I won a couple of those once… yeah, that’s right, boost my self-esteem with memories of victories past. These “blocks” aren’t in any permanent order, or even in a decent layout at the moment – I just sew a bunch and then arrange them at the end.
*Yee hah! If you only knew the real count of my unfinished sh*t…**
**I need to know about filters and whatnot – anybody know? I’d hate to think I’d be censored for a “bad” word (godforbid the children!), though I wonder if breast still comes up as something to be censored… hmm… booby titty cans rack jugs dirty pillows.
ASTITCHMATISM 