In a flurry of productivity over the holidays, I finished up a few things that had been WIPs for a bit - among them this here blue-and-white hourglass dealio, which has gone to my ol' college chum, Loquacious_E, and his fabulous ladyfriend Melaquious Trombone (a favorite of her many, many Facebook nommes de plume):
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| Some shirting type materials + white, different hues of blues with the odd light brown thrown in. |
I met Loquacious_E on campus as he was returning from a stint in Australia lo these 2.5 decades past, and I mostly remember two things: first, his anomalous blond dreadlocks (well, baby-locs, at least) and savage tan; and second, how he just appeared one day on the quad to his friends' aggrieved joy that he was back, but hadn't told anyone (this, clearly, in the Time Before Facebook). He seemed the sort to keep his own counsel, but it was also pretty apparent that there wasn't much happening that wasn't being captured and analyzed somewhere in that big computer he uses for brains.
Eventually I recognized a punny-tongued kindred spirit, an amused realist with a trenchant wit as dry as the Outback. He was one of my four dude roomies in a college house that went by the deceptively bland name of "The Clark House" (for the street) but that house, though I only technically lived there for a semester, figures at least as prominently as any other campus character in my stories from that era. Apart from the open sewage drain in the basement floor (which did not seem to bother the bands that played there) and the crumbling ceiling tiles out of which may drop, for instance, an actual goddamn mouse, this house was situated strategically between where everyone else lived and the bars where we all drank and went to see rock shows, so it was routinely pressed into service as a way-station, or location of the after-party, or emergency quarters for any too "tired" to make it home (and/or too drunk to be afraid of sleeping on the couch, which was... not very clean.) And at any given event one might find Loquacious_E holding up a wall somewhere, eyes shut and giggling in characteristic glee, and making wry observations at the absurdity of it all. Certainly I saw him doing this way more than I saw him doing any schoolwork, which minor irritation apparently wasn't worth bothering to do if you have the sort of brain that E has.
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| Brain not pictured. He's already thought of 10 replies to the stupid comment you haven't finished making. Best Portrait Ever, from Champaign by Go Pellegrinetti, circa 2008 I think? |
Anyhoo, E absented himself from the midwest after college to soak in the glory that was mid-90s Austin, TX, along with several others of our crowd - I swear for a good 10 years there I was never in want of a couch (cleaner than those of the Clark House) to crash on in Austin. But as E returned in the early oughts to the midwest to go to school for another approximately 30 years to finish off an Engineering/Arcitectural combo platter, and as he has now purchased a 2 flat with his ladyfriend, I think we can call him local once more. And that Architecture degree is going to serve me well someday too, when I scrape together the cash to hire E to design me my tiny cabin on the grounds of Mikuador, amidst the vegetal splendour of the SW Wisconsin driftless area. (Amusingly, E offered to thank me for this quilt by helping the next time I needed butter churned or a barn raised - little does he know that this latter thing is EXACTLY what I will be asking for, down the road; at least, one raised on blueprints that can satisfy Richland County building codes. Mwahahaha!)
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| Here is Loquacious_E, at left, cracking up me and another roomie from the Clark House, Murphy, in the Logan Square kitchen of friend Ellen. I am in danger of spilling whosever's leftovers those are, which I surely poached. Was this the one where Ellen later injured her back trying to dance to "All The Single Ladies"? Picture by Krystal. |
And at some point after his homecoming - I'ma wanna say maybe a little over 10-11 years ago now? - he located his petite amie Melaquious (who had also lived some time in New Zealand, so they could maybe compare notes on Australasiatic accents and foods) and brought her into the fold, to the great benefit of us all, and to the ten-fold increase in the fart-smell-related-humor one might experience at any given cocktail party. Sometimes your friends find a mate/spouse/partner who is always just their mate/spouse/partner, and that's cool - we don't all gotta be having sleepovers and shit - but Mel has become a friend in her own right, too. For instance, I can't recall how many times I've asked her to explain her remarkable talent for getting free airline miles, which is like some sort of superpower; or made her promise to teach me how to properly lay tile, a trade she picked up in New Zealand. It's also possible I've seen more of Mel than of Eric in recent past years - it was indeed the same Mel who came to visit me in Cape Town, the origin of this very blog, and also the origin of this extremely great picture that I cherish in my heart always, of Mel being forcibly ejected from our white-water raft somewhere outside of Livingstone, on the Zambezi River:
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| Mel in full extension. My god I love this picture. I will never not love this picture. |
This is the event that inspired our river guide to call her "Water-Melan" for the rest of our trip. Also, ask Mel to dance for you sometime. It is incredible. Cape Town will not soon recover from those particular stylings, and that was 7 years ago.
So, bound by their mutual love of travel, organic vegetable gardening, extraordinarily fat felines (RIP, Nastee - we hardly knew ye), and a keen sense of the ridiculousness of things, Loquacious_E and Melaquious form a dynamic duo who are instrumental to my greater social life back home - which is true even though I may only see them a couple times a year these days. (Which gives you a pretty good indication of what my social life is like, but that's certainly nobody's fault but my own.) One such event was the wedding of B & S two years back - a wedding Mel both precipitated, by introducing the happy couple, and officiated, with all of the pomp and dignity one might expect from a mail-order minister with a hot line in bathroom humor. (It was lovely, actually. I was teary.)
Side note: E and M also went to the Dalmatian coast and environs this past Labor Day, and damn me, I really should have gone with them: first, because that would have been fun, and cool to see, and second, because Mel is an excellent person to travel with, because she always has plans and ideas (which I tend not to have.) AND she takes excellent pictures, to boot, such that you may not have to worry about taking substandard crappy ones with your shitty phone, because hers will be better anyway. You can see proof of this in the afore-linked blog posts from Africa: if it's detailed and interestingly composed, that's Mel, and if it's grainy and possibly has a thumb in it, that's me. Here's one she took of me as we safari'd, which is one of maybe three pictures of myself I actually like:
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| I don't have plans to make a musical record album or write a book, but if I did, this picture would be on it. |
Thus, this quilt is for many things, even beyond taking a good picture of me or making me laugh for 20+ years: for shooting the breeze on a hot July night waiting for renegade fireworks to begin, surrounded by Mel's lush backyard jungle of a garden and her outdoor bathtub; or hogging the whole al fresco dining portion of old neighborhood haunts, from just before to well after happy hour; or driving across three countries in search of springbok carpaccio; or sitting on the Clark House porch, vaguely queasy from a night of music and beer, waiting for everyone to wake up so we could go eat at Fiesta and get back for a nap, back in the day.
And among these, there is also that one time that I plant-and-cat-sat for them while they were gone for Christmas - Japan, I think? or was it Turkey that year? - in 2010, which seems to be an odd thing to be grateful for, but which engagement came a critical juncture when I was stranded in Louisiana at sister Lulu's, recovering from unemployment, relative homelessness, and exploding appendix surgery, and desperately trying to return to my home base. It was the combined efforts of many of my comrades, most chronicled here by now, that got me home; and it was staying chez E&M that got me that first foothold back in the locale and the life I was hankering for. So a hearty mwah! and an egregious bear-hug to you both, essentially for leaving town right when I needed you to, so I could park my kiester on your couch and get my bearings in the company of your portly kitty and your large vinyl collection, and drink all of your herbal tea (I had a cold.)
I went pretty simple on this here quilt - when I asked Mel some months ago what a good quilty thing might be for them, she voiced "blue" and "modern" over traditional and other colors. Though the hourglass pattern I used is anything but modern. That sucker has been around since at least the 18th century as a quilt block, let alone the centuries prior as a regular old decorative motif favored by aboriginal peoples - cultures who never actually saw an hourglass in the flesh. I mean, triangles aren't exactly the intellectual property of any particular era.
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| closer up on some hourglass blocks - not too tricky. |
While there are as many definitions of "modern quilting" as there are actual quilters, some consensus seems to have been reached about the "modernization" of traditional patterns being part of the trend - spiffing up the colors a bit, making the pattern outsized or deconstructed someway, to put a new spin on an old beast. Simplification is also part of that overall aesthetic. True modern quilters would probably poo-pooh this as an example of the art, though. Whatever my modern intentions, E&M's blue and white hourglasses really call to mind something breezy and nautical, more than screaming MODERN (but really, who wants a quilt that screams at you?)
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| I AM NOT SCREAMING YOU ARE SCREAMING |
For the back, just a big old swath of more stripedy blue and white, which fabric came from the Stash of the Unknown Benefactress, and a skinny band of chambray at the top (or bottom, depending) because as usual, I was just short - and sometimes it's nice to break up an unrelieved expanse of one fabric anyway. Daringly, I made the stripes go horizontally across the width of the quilt, rather than the more traditional vertical stripes you might expect. I KNOW. I'M A RENEGADE. I liked the skinny stripes - they made me think of old school ticking, but not quite as Gramma's Featherbed as all that.
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| Just bashin' the status quo, that's me |
And the quilting was a quarter inch to either side of the seam lines on the diagonals, making the back all diamonds, toute suite and easy peasy. I have not had the energy to dive back into free-motion quilting on this machine; that feels more like pursuing an artform, whereas I just want to play with fabric and make geometric patterns out of different colors as a hobby. Someday maybe I'll have the attention span to put into decorative quilting, but for now, peeps be getting straight(ish) lines and grids up the wazoo.
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| Diamonds are a quilter's best friend |
And there you have it, my fine favored friends - a wee binkie for your lovely home, where I may yet need a couch to crash on, and will always need a beer to drink and some breezes to shoot. No matter where you may roam, you should be prepared to find me sleeping on your porch or possibly in your outside bathtub (weather permitting). And next time you cook up a travelin' plan, keep me posted. Even if I can't go with you, I will still definitely want to hear all about the absurdities of the trip, since experiencing things through the prism of your particular worldviews is the next best thing to being there; and in some cases, way better.
See you soon, don't go changin', and save me a seat on the patio.
See you soon, don't go changin', and save me a seat on the patio.
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| Lookit you, you starry-eyed wastrels. photo by Craig DeA. |
Love! and Besos,
Astrid.
