domicile

Things Done and Things Undone

Sunday morning
Originally uploaded by emira

It's been a very busy weekend/week/month/year and as I sit here with a lasagne in the oven, I'm overwhelmed by all that is still undone, despite how exhausted I am from all that has been done. Last night I had a dance show (flamenco), for which I performed a mere four or five minutes but the adrenaline rush of performing for a live audience and the preparation for that, added to everything else that is on the list of things to do, has left me floored. Our publishers sent us fully designed pages of our book (yes, it's available for pre-order at Amazon and do feel free to reserve your copy now -- a refrain you'll come to recognize in the new year) to be reviewed for proofing corrections this weekend. Lauren did her round over the first half of the weekend and I dragged my exhausted self (and my Tim Burton-esque post-show, post-hairspray hair) out of bed early this morning to start taking my own run through it. I must say the day when this book will be nothing but a joy seems a ways off from now. While it is exciting to get past each stage in this process -- seeing the cover, seeing laid out pages, eventually getting a galley, etc. -- I do truly wish I had more time to devote to each stage and enjoying it. At this point in time it's hard to think of this as an accomplishment as it seems more like a roadblock in the way of other things in life. You know, "important" things like making gingerbread, finishing off the many ambitious sewing projects I had planned for holiday gifts, painting Miss P's room in her big xmas surprise, etc. I find I have a bad habit of doing this, focusing on the things not achieved rather than appreciating things done. Certainly that has been the case with this year and this book and I'm very much hoping 2008 will see a shift in that perspective.

In the meantime, I'm hoping to be able to stay awake late enough to enjoy decorating the tree with Miss P and Martin this evening. It will be the first real sign of the holidays around here -- aside from the pile snipped threads that keeps migrating upstairs with me.

Quilting Quandry

Oven Mitts
Originally uploaded by emira

Quilting is among the fabric arts that has always fascinated/terrified me. I've been easing into it with my dabbling in Amy Butler patterns and for my holiday gifts I decided to dive in head first. Honestly, I thought I was taking it pretty easy. Turns out: I'm in a bit over my head.

For my grandma I'm making an apron using a modified Amy Butler pattern (actually a bit of an Amy Butler pattern mash up) which I'll post about as soon as it's a bit closer to done. The apron is pretty straightforward (mostly, but again more on this later) just quilted squares really. I borrowed a friend's rotary cutter and mat for that project, and that gave me all kinds of false confidence and joy. If you've never used a rotary cutter you must do so now. Wow does that make things easy. Anyway. That project is coming along alright.

The over mitts? Not so much. I figured they would be pretty easy to toss off and foolishly I was most concerned about the whole "making a quilt sandwich" part, that is: layering fabric and wool and stitching it together. Given that this pattern just has a basic grid quilting stitch that part was easy as pie, much to my delight. Binding, however, not so much. I've unpicked and redone the binding on these three times already and I'm still not happy with it. Argh. Now, I may be making it extra hard for myself in that these are rounded edges, still. What the heck am I doing wrong?

I've got a few ideas and I'd love some pointers if anyone has ideas/tips for building up my binding skills. So, things I see not working quite right:

1. While making the quilt sandwich part is easy, I find that my fabric pulls to the centre so I end up with wool a fairly large (say 1/4 inch) exposed wool border around the edges. The second time I attached the binding I trimmed this off, but it means I've made slightly smaller mitts than intended. In the future should I cut my fabric a bit larger than my wool layers so they line up better in the end?

2. Binding widths. I made this binding to the width specified, but can I make it bigger? I don't even know that that would help. My binding isn't very evenly spread from front to back inspite of my best intentions to line it up. Is there a trick here? What am I missing?

3. Pinning. It's hard to pin curves at the best of times. With binding? It seemed impossible. This kind of relates to things lining up, as described above, but still, do others pin? If I do straight lines should I pin? I did hand baste the binding on the third time I did this and that helped, but it didn't really solve things.

Any and all quilting expertise welcomed.