Binding the Fractured Flower

…that's not a euphemism.  It's the completion of Lulu's birthday quilt.


Not much to say on this one, just a few final photos of the completed quilt I was calling "Apophenia", but which pattern is really called Fractured Flowers - as I'd previously decided, I bound it up in orange stripes with a hint of green, for the most part…..though naturally, I ran out of it after making an error, and in my attempt to finish the whole quilt on time, I used a little scrappy bit of other orange fabric, which tone I ended up liking better for being a little orange-er and warmer.  That's okay, though: I still like the stripy fabric as well.  Binge-watching for this binding was seasons 1 & 2 of "Grimm."  How I love to bind a quilt and half-pay attention to bad television featuring pretty men.  I am a middle-aged cliche.

A few more photos….the first is the whole completed top with binding still in progress on the upper and upper right-hand sides (you can see the little binding clippy things I've been using instead of pins, which I dearly love:)

And here is a slightly better view of the quilting,

Bias, Material Differential, and Apophenia: Why Is This Blog Post Titled Like a Thesis?

….being an examination of the attempt to make a quilt beyond my skill level, a very frustrating process indeed.

So my sister, Lulu Fishpaw Reflux, had a birthday a couple days back, and though I have been manically trying to complete her quilt since, oh, early February, it was not done on time.  Why, you say? Well, I reply, because I got it into my head that Lulu's decor could use a nice soothing repetitive geometric pattern and I thought I'd found just the pattern for her - though I think I may have been confused, because she has said that her preferred decor would look like "a very expensive private sanitarium" but I believe instead I have made her something that might drive her screaming to just such a place, if she gazes upon it for too long.  But lo! You can see for yourself, IF YOU DARE:

You are getting verrry sleepy

This here pattern is called Fractured Flowers, by Happy Stash Quilts, which looked

Drunk Babies, Part II

....and also drunk sewist, if this free-motion quilting is any indication.

After a flurry of activity around the holiday break, I slacked off a bit in January, but am back at my machine and now trying to beat some upcoming deadlines.  One of them is the impending birthday of Emmy, the as-yet-not-arrived-daughter of my cousin's daughter, and while I'm sure that familial relationship has a name I'll be damned if I know what it is.  Let's go with calling me her "aunt", a suitably generic term that nevertheless gives me a reason to make her a wee blanket to welcome her arrival.  Though probably a Bad Influence Aunt, given that I still think the idea of drunk babies is hilarious.

So:  welcome, Emmy!  And congratulations, Amy and Jesse!

Back in the fall, Emmy's mama Amy came to Chicago for work and was accompanied by my cousin Mike (Amy's pa), and some of their midwestern family came into the city proper, to overeat at a chophouse chosen to assuage Amy's steak craving, and to drink convivially, and to figure out how we could invest in Mike's dream micro-brewery, and to ultimately wind up at a Wrigleyville bar where there was a karaoke contest going on (that last being most definitely my fault).