A Little Interstitial Music: A Miscellany

...being not one thing or another, and certainly not the things they probably could have been.

Continuing my inability to focus on Things I Said I Would Do, being distracted by Things That Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time, here are a couple of quilty things that happened lately instead of things I've told some folks I would do for them.  I mean, I will.  Soon. Meanwhile....

First, a baby blanket for the cousin of a friend - kind of an odd color palate, but she gave me free rein on pattern and color, and I had been noodling with some orange-yellow-green-purple bits and bobs I had sitting around.  At her wise suggestion I swapped purple for blue and in the final analysis, it's a cheery, bright, non-gender specific lil Broken Windows strip on a mottled Grunge white, with a cozy gray windowpane flannel on back + a strip of yellow 40s juvenile print flannel I inherited from the Estate of the Unknown Benefactress.

Then there's this: a scrappy low-volume Rail Fence quilt with bonus Scrappy Rainbow Pinwheels - a super easy quilt for beginners, if you have a ton of semi-neutrals lying around and some bright squares.












This has still not quite used up all those shirt scraps that made Chris and JJ's Trip Around the World quilt and also appeared in the Cap'n's Low volume Postage Stamps, lo these many years past.  In fact, it was probably some of the first fabric in my stash, when I started a sewing class 7 years ago this fall.  (Seven years! That's kind of nutty. I was thinking 2015 but, no, per this very blog, it was 2012. Yowza.) Below, you can see I used the blue-er shirts more centrally and as I got out to the edges it was more whites and grey-er ones. This has very little to do with a grand strategy and everything to do with that being how it got laid down on the Design Floor the first time around.

Continuing a proud tradition of not having enough backing width by mere inches.

Anyhoo, these are 2.5" x 6.5" strips with the 2.5" color squares sewn in diagonally - though, trickily, since the blades of the pinwheel need to be free to spin, you can't strip piece these because the colors are on the inside, not the outside, of the block, so you cut out all of the 6.5" lengths, add the colors, and then sew the Rail Fences together.  It's great mindless sewing for summer baseball game "watching."  (Go Cubs!)

This quilting was a BIG DAMN DEAL for me - my first entirely free-motion machine quilted quilt, instead of just select easy-to-reach areas.  I did wavy lines in the direction of the rails which, as it turns out, may have been kind of wasted effort and I could have just done it as an all-over pattern, because you can't really see how the wiggles change from Fence to Fence unless you're looking for it.  But it was exciting to finish and I'm MUCH more comfortable with freehand wavy lines. I started with closer lines, almost a wood grain texture but soon discovered that was going to take me an ice age to finish, so loosened up a bit. That results in a nicer drape to the quilt anyway, IMO. 

Also, the binding: rainbow ombre! I dig how it looks, especially on the gray/black back.  Cheery!  Except maybe for the gray binding strip (centered on at one side - I just hadn't prepped enough of the rainbow stuff for binding and didn't care to go back and cut one more strip of it, when I had the gray binding already made for some previous project.  Because I'm lazy. Or thrifty. Or whatever, it didn't happen.

 Then there's this odd raspberry cotton-candy colored confection which is just a basic Coin quilt (also called "Chinese Coin", "Roman Coin", and "Bar Quilt" - mine's more of a Bar, since I think coins are supposed to be narrower columns, and sometimes also different heights).  (Why do people pronounce that "heighths"? I never understood that.) (Of course mine WOULD be a "Bar Quilt.")

But the color scheme has been in my brain a lot lately - this pink-yellow-orange-purple series.  Not sure why. Missing sunsets? Strong yen for sherbet?  Trying to rekindle a childhood love of FruitStripe Gum? Maybe being in Houston this long has made me a secret Astros fan, but in 1983?

Colors a little more true in the sunlight (if wrinkly)

The only thing I could think to use for sashing (since I am quite bored with white and gray, for a change) was this very light blue, which is a linen texture from Henley Studio, which *kind of* sets it off perfectly and *kind of* makes it look like the colors ran in the wash, which they haven't (yet. But I guess now it doesn't matter if they do.)

Finally, there's this unfortunate top, which probably needs several borders to make it a usable size.... except that it is wildly out of true, with these rows of wee 2" squares finishing up pretty dramatically different lengths, despite having the same count... uh, woops.

At upper left, we find.... wait, WTF?

So because this is not critical, it has been summarily wadded up and thrown in a corner until I have energy to fix it or take it apart for reconstituting some other way.  Bleh.

Looks better when you can't see the corner in question.

These will likely be donated at some point - but first, I have to get them back to Illinois, because I will shortly be ending my stint at this gig in TX and heading off for ... somewhere else, tbd.  And every time I move hotels/airbnbs/ accounts, I gotta pack up whatever giant mounds of fabric have accumulated in my pro tempore Sewing Studio, and shove it all into my teeny Mazda for schlepping to the next port of call. 





You'd think this constant upheaval would make me more conservative when I buy fabric in a temporary location, and force me to Kon Marie the crap outta my traveling selections, but.... then you'd remember who you were talking about, and you'd laugh and laugh.

In my defense, there are some GREAT fabtic stores around here.

In conclusion:  I might not be doing what I've told myself sternly to do, but at least I'm sewing, and mental-health-wise, that's better than not sewing and waiting for The Right Inspiration to hit.  I mean, these piles of fabric are not going to cut themselves into smaller pieces and sew themselves back together.  Right? Right!  Back to work!  Except maybe I'll just take a bath for a bit, and check out Pinterest, in case there's anything VERY CRITICAL that I must make RIGHT AWAY.

Linking up with Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Whoop it Up Friday ... er, Saturday.

Between the Sprit and the Dust: Love Letters to Strangers, Part 2

...being a second annual contribution, however humble, to a more crinkly, quilt-comforted world.

The world will give you that once in awhile, a brief timeout; the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life.

SUE MONK KIDD, The Secret Life of Bees

Greetings, fellow travelers, and lemme tell you this: on the list of quilts I am making IN MY HEAD (both the list, and the quilts) there are about 50 people who are due for some quilty-blog-love-letters and I have such grand ideas for you all!... but instead I make scrap quilts and give them to strangers, because they are patterns I wanted to try or color combos that seemed interesting or opportunistic usages of leftovers, but are not *just right* for my listees. So just know that if you're reading this there's a better than even chance you are ON the LIST (unless I made you one already, and then you are on the SECOND list, which is for when the first list is done) and I probably also have a Pinterest page devoted to you, which is probably like 500 quilts deep.  It's the thought that counts? (No, really, it's my life's mission to do this, and so it will get done. Eventually.)

Scrappy Brights Race Quilt

I do hope, however, that these 5 orphaned quilts are just right for someone, as they are going to Mercyful Quilts, run by the kind-hearted Bernie at Needle & Foot.  Mercyful Quilts gives quilts to folks who are dying in Mercy Hospital, Sacramento CA, and is one of the recipients of the Hands2Help quilt drive run by Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict every year.  This mission of providing a little down-home comfort to terminal cases in the hospital struck a chord with me, because my mom was in the hospital when she died, some 13 (!) years back now, and it was just as clinical and depressing as you might expect; whereas my dad was at home, in hospice, on a sea of morphine, and that seemed like a considerably more preferable way to go.

Blue & White stripe 2 color quilt, "Chill"

One of the things I remember clearly about my folks dying was exactly how surreal and clock-stopping it was.  How disorienting and sad and scary, even for my sibs and me as fully adult people, to suddenly be in a world where we simply didn't have parents anymore - no matter how old you are or how prepared you think you are, it seems, this is still a mighty blow.  And sort of impossible and silly, too, like maybe they're just punking us and have really just boarded a plane to Vegas to get away from their damn kids for awhile?  As Bean wisely noted, after her mom passed, "It is absurd to me - ABSURD - that my mother will never meet my children."  Because it doesn't seem like that should even be a possibility, yet here we are.

In my dad's case, there was this exceptional hospice nurse lady - I forget her name, sadly, because she was a rock-like, clear-eyed Charon to Dad in his weeks before passing, and a wise counselor to us left behind, in our time of confusion and grief.  And I thought how amazing a gift it was, to be able to escort so many people to the very brink of the unknown with such utter sangfroid and tact and sensitivity, without ever losing yourself in the drama and sadness of it.  So hats off to you, good lady, whoever you were.  You appeared when we needed you and you gave us exactly what we needed, and left us grateful and less at sea, and that is more than can be said for most occupations (ahem, looking at you, plumbers and auto mechanics.)

Scrappy Neutral Strip Diamonds

Anyway, this morbid trip down memory lane, prompted in part by Keanu Reeves' touching surprise answer on Colbert awhile back to the "where do we go when we die?" question, was the impetus for donating to Mercyful Quilts this year, in hopes of providing help to those nurses who are right there on the brink with the dying and their families, who try to bring a little color and softness to what may otherwise be a relatively sterile, unforgiving environment of hospital palliative care.  And if a bereaved person wants the quilt when it is all over, they can take it home as a treasured memory.... or, in my case, they have carte blanche, if it helps, to ritually set the quilts on fire or cut them to ribbons in anger and sadness and wishing to never see it again, as emblematic of what may have been one of the saddest points of their lives.  Hey man: whatever gets you through, I back it 100%.

Scrappy 9-Patches

So: five quilts to Mercyful, one for each of my siblings and me, to honor those who honor the dying.  And for every other orphan, of any age, and to the nameless woman who held our collective hand and calmly helped with funeral arrangements and kicked off the healing reminiscences when we were still awkwardly trying to maintain our best oh-shit-we-have-company small talk; and to the nurses and caregivers of Mercy Hospital, and everywhere sad, scared people look around hopefully for someone else to be the expert at dying when clearly no one has much personal experience in the matter:  I salute you.  It can't be easy being on those particular front lines every day, but many of the rest of us, more sheltered from that final inevitability, appreciate the sensible, stolid escort, whether we are the one getting on the plane, or the ones waving goodbye, sadly, from the ground.

Rainbow Colorwash Quarter-Square Triangles and 4-Patches

May we all know a little peace before dying.

Gratefully,

Astrid

Ups & Downs & Half & Half for Little Lambs & Quilty Hugs (Respectively)

... being my first contributions to Hands2Help, and a celebration of quilty community.

As was perhaps inevitable, I've been haunting the quilty blogs and inching my way into saying hello to the long-timers in that crowd: and also routinely being amazed and a little shamed by the volume of output these folks whip through.  I can't conceive, at this point in my life, of having so much time to devote to quilting but I now know what I'm aspiring to for retirement.  Long after I have made quilts for all of my friends and family, and have started in on Round 2, I hope to be retired.  OH but also contributing regularly to the many quilt-providing drives and organizations: whether for refugees or foster kids; cancer sufferers or those displaced by fire or flood; women's shelters or veteran's outreach; homeless centers or centers for the elderly - anywhere someone needs a hand or a hug, some big-hearted sewists are on the case, making sure the quilty community's love of the craft (and the fabric) is being translated into a truly staggering outpouring of goodwill.

Which is where Hands2Help comes in.  This mind-bending effort by Sarah of Confessions of a Fabric Addict has drawn a bigger response each year over year since she started in 2011; this popularity adds days if not weeks to her administrative load, I'm sure, but also adds literally hundreds of quilts every year to the general quilt population worldwide.  More importantly, of course, these offerings arrive with the humanitarian impulse sewn right in.  They say: "I see you, I think I understand a little of what you're experiencing, and I hope this helps you through.  How about a hug?"

Sarah picked 3 organizations for H2H to contribute to this year:

• Little Lambs of Utah - comfort kits for kids going into foster care, emergency shelter or who have been hospitalized.

• Quilty Hugs for Happy Chemo! - I guess that's pretty self-explanatory.  Another blogger, Em of Em's Scrapbag, collects these quilts to distribute to folks going through chemo.

• Victoria's Quilts Canada - for folks living with cancer in Canada, Linda (and friends, I hope) turn your quilt tops into full-blown quilts.

...but Sarah also made it clear that if you had an organization close to your heart (or your physical self) you could always make quilts for them instead, and it would still add to the overall bounty of H2H.  Very cool!  Being home for work for a change, and having access to my fabric and scrap pile (albeit tucked away in storage), I wanted to add a little bit of love to the pile.  So:

This one is going to Little Lambs (and hopefully it's not too big for a backpack, per instructions). I was trying to come up with something that maybe an older kid/teen would dig, because I feel like sometimes that age group gets short shrift, so hopefully this isn't too precious or young.  My sis-in-law gave me a brief glimpse into the life of a foster kid through her volunteer work and... it's brutal.  Hats off to these folks for giving a shit about these youngsters, whom the System seems to routinely forget. 

I call it Ups and Downs, for obvious reasons.  Seems apt.  I followed a pattern by Angela Walters, w/Kona Beige and scraps.

Excuse my thumb over there. Some spots, some crosses, and some swirly waves on the back.

Ugh, my first attempt at machine binding.  I'm..... sure I'll get better eventually.

And this Half-and-Half quilt, a pattern by Missouri Star Quilt Company, is off to Em for Quilty Hugs.  Er.  It will be.  As soon as I'm doing quilting it and bind it.  Which I'll do as soon as my replacement thread shows up in the mail, because I thought I had several spools of this Green Linen thread but turns out I had ONE of those, and a whole lotta Ecru I didn't want to use.  I mean, from a distance, it was *very* close.  Ecrulinen.  Linecru.  Like that close.  And my local Joann's utterly failed me by not having it in stock when I made an emergency run.

Made from some Kona... Old Green? maybe? yardage, and like 18 ten inch scraps squares of various sunny brights. 

A strip of hot pink among some other springy greens. They don't exactly go with the front green, but they are at least different enough that it is evident I wasn't *TRYING* to match anything.

The stalled quilting effort. Ha! Didn't get too far.  As I learned in B-school, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.  Stupid Ecru.

This weather has been crap.  I took these in late afternoon after like 5 consecutive days of downpour, so the shadows are long, and the patience was short.

But I vow to get this done this week - I've taken Friday off for this expressed purpose, and I shall not be diverted from my task: nor rain, nor Joann's, nor Ecru, nor dark of night, shall stay this courier from the swift completion of my appointed rounds.  That is to say: check's in the mail!

I regret not getting something together for Victoria's Quilts too, but I can always send it along later, I guess, and at minimum I can make them something for next year.  I just ran out of days (and yet, retirement seems to be receding on the horizon, so I guess ol' Albert was right about that whole time being relative thing.)

To Sarah, and Em, and Linda; to all the quilters who have linked up this week, or sent quilts over the last 8 years:  hell yeah and well done, you all! (or "youse", as we say in Chicago.)  I hope that in my future - my near future, even before retirement - I am able to keep up with your generous spirit, dedication, and time management chops.  Or if I can't keep up, at least I can keep trying.

Besos, 

Astrid

Fuzzy Resolution: A Year in Review

....in which we acknowledge that 2017 was pretty unproductive, but vow to reform in the new year.

Fortunately for me, I do not make a living blogging, because I would starve.

In my defense, though, I was mysteriously blocked from logging into the Blahg for some time, and while it was not a difficult fix, in the end, it was an irritating and just-large enough obstacle that it overwhelmed my desire to hear myself talk - I know! - in this forum.  Until today, when I was looking for something to enable a vigorous procrastination session that involved neither any of my Four Adult Tasks (groceries, laundry, garbage and dishes); nor Work, which is something I generally do not deign to do on days off.

And here we are, all logged in like a real blogger!  Happy 2018, all!

So a few things happened this year that were not recorded:

First, in Spring, was a quilt for my old workmate and karaoke comrade-at-arms, Grassie.  I fully intend to get my shit together to write her the post I promised all those months ago.  But meanwhile, she had asked for a Kaffe Fasset pattern called StripeScape which used a heaping helping of his stripey, serape-esque fabrics which were really nice to work with. And this came together pretty quickly, which made me so exuberant that I decided I should hand-quilt it.  Yipes!  I had hand-quilted only Nene's Winding Ways prior to this, and while I really enjoy the process, there was FAR MORE hand-quilting in Grassie's Serape Quilt, I think, because it took me so, so, SO long to finish it.  And even when I gave it to here there was a section at the bottom that was not finished.....er, in homage to how our friendship will always be a work in progress, or some shit, I dunno, you fill in the gaps.  Anyway, here it is, better blog post to follow, Grassie!!

You can enlarge this to see the hand stitches, which follow the stripe directions in straight lines at about 1" apart. Whew! Also, most of my pictures of the progress on this one seem to have gone AWOL.  Stay tuned for those (I hope).

And then my niece Boolia had her Bat Mitvah in the summer - her quilt was what I considered a "sophisticated riot" of color which is, indeed, what Boolia is herself.   Sadly for me, I did not realize her BM colors were rose (which is part of her name) and silver, or something? So this quilt is decidedly not that, and is probably as opposite to that as you can possibly get and still be within the visible light spectrum, but hopefully still fills the bill for a young lady starting on her journey through the dark forests of teenager-hood, a time both for becoming more sophisticated (well, supposedly) and also for having a riot.  This navy sashed stars quilt is not a formal pattern but there are a lot of these kinds of star around - the Scrap-Jar Stars I made for Colt in 2016 is similar, though this one interchanges the solid background with the patterned colors on alternate blocks for a jolly dappled effect.  (How often do you get to use "jolly," outside of Jolly Old Saint Nick or For She's a Jolly Good Fellow? Jolly good show!)

(In the mix here was also Gramsy's Granny Squares quilt, which I already blogged about, and apparently also E & M's Butter-Churnin' Hourglass quilt was also sent in 2017, though it seems to me I finished that over the holiday break last year, but whatever.)

Lastly on the quilt front, my cousin CC had, some time ago, asked me to make a quilt for her partner Sher, which was supposed to be a Christmas present, but, um, is at least going to make it for Sher's birthday this coming week, I understand.  I was very pleased with this despite some minor emergencies that gave me something to fix on New Years Day.  As it turns out, though, it was also not a difficult fix, though it did cause me some angsty hyperventilation, AND gave me some new confidence about fixing my inevitable fuck-ups in the future, because once you've put a quilt together it's actually pretty easy to take it apart again, and restitch as needed.  Design-wise, CC was looking for "clean, flowing lines" and maybe mid-century or Art Deco, which left a pretty wide open field to work with. So this is a technique called a French Braid and the pattern "Thanks, Frank," by the venerable documenter of French Braiding, Jane Hardy Miller, is intended to evoke the Prairie School leaded-glass stylings of Frank Lloyd Wright, whose work spanned (and changed interestingly during) the period from Arts & Crafts to Mid Century.

If you're thinking this progression of colors would trigger my ColorStress (TM), you are correct.

The original of this in Miller's book was mostly dark and cool feeling, so I warmed it up with some earthy bricks and olives and browns, and used a background which was intended to evoke crackled old glass but is actually pebbles, and made the whole thing surprisingly (to me) traditional looking. It was also a little weirdly skinny, despite my adding extra borders.   I really like the thin black stained-glass-reminiscent sashing around the colors, though, and will probably use this technique again someday.

Finished crinkle, with beadboard-esque "piano key" vertical quilting. The back is an orangey flannel.

And finally, in related sewing news, I have a new friend which I ordered to be delivered to me here in NYC, who arrived in September, the first of many visitors to this NYC apartment!  Her name is Suki, and she is a Juki quilting machine, and she is the bomb.  She is about 3x the bomb that my old trusty Singer was, if you count bombness in dollars, but I love them both in their ways.  However, the Singer is tucked away in my storage unit at present, so Suki has been keeping me company on this NYC jaunt.  Though she is, if she will forgive me saying so, frickin' HEAVY.  Like myself, she is an semi-industrial workhorse.  She only does one thing (a straight stitch), but she has a powerhouse motor that makes short work of bulky seams, and has an elegant elongated throat (the hole between the upright part of the machine and the needle mechanism) so I can stuff more quilt in there and not wrestle with sewing on the middle of the quilts so much. She also has an easy thread-clipping mechanism and a needle threader for these old eyes, speed control, and is generally a cut above in all respects.  We are still working on some tension issues (thread tension, that is) but I think she's settling in nicely.  Welcome, Suki!

All function, no fuss.  Look at that speed control to the far right - I am definitely more turtle than rabbit.

And looking at this Blahg I realize I literally only posted twice last year, and that is kinda sad - not because I make a living blogging, because I do not, but because the aim of my blahg is love letters to friends, and I have many, many more of those to write.  This year was a bit of a downer, politically, plus I was on the road a bit more and in more different places, for less time in each, than last year.....but excuses be damned, I aim to be more productive this year; and to keep making inroads into this hobby which has brought me such delight, and provided a way to share warm fuzzies with my peeps.

Things to try in the New Year:

1. More hand stitching. It takes for-fucking-ever, but it is so very satisfying.
2. Along with that, i'd like to do some Sashiko patterns, perhaps working my way up to doing the traditional white thread on indigo fabric thing (that will REALLY show all the mistakes).  I just love the geometric precision coupled with the utilitarian, but nevertheless incredibly beautiful, Japanese art form.  Um. Anyone have a yakuta whose seams need some patching/reinforcing?

Traditional forms: Simple Sashiko, Hitomezashi, and Kogin, picture from Studio Aika blog

3. Applique.  The only applique I've really done was the Flag of Mikuador, but there's a wealth of patterns out there, traditional and modern, that have piqued my interest in this fundamental fabric craft.
4. And speaking of Mikuador, my brother and fam took the plunge and bought an old farmhouse on some acreage out aways in NW IL.  And a farmlet needs a barn quilt, i.e.,  a quilt pattern painted on wood and hung from a barn.... which is a whole 'nother artform, really, but I have that in my sights for spring, hopefully.  A quick Google search will come up with hundreds of barn quilts for you to peruse if you are so inclined (none, it must be said, that look anything like the Flag of Mikuador.  Viva!)

Random barn quilt from Guthrie Center, IA (picture posted here in 2011)

5. Free Motion Quilting.  I've avoided it for many reasons, but Suki the Juki gives me a new inspiration to try it again - also, she comes with a bunch of different FM quilting feet, and I just bought myself some new FM rulers, so I believe the die is cast for FMQ2018.  (I actually had a dream last night that I bought a new FM quilting ruler. It was purple.  It's amazing how deep and complex my subconscious is.)
6. .....and, of course, to continue writing thank you letters to my beloveds, so many of whom I still would like to send a humble fabricky offering and a few fond phrases. Don't know where I'd be without ya, peeps!  As the wise men of Extreme once, confusingly, put it: "More than words is all you have to do (sic) to make it real."  But since I have few enough opportunities to show anyone anything in person these days, I will have to make do with the words themselves, stuffed between layers of fabric and sent to you from the UPS STORE of my HEART.

I love you easily as much as this naked kewpie doll does.

As ever, Besos, Merry Craftsmas, and Happy New quilts Years to all,

Astrid

Animatronics are Banned at the Home for Wayward Girls: A Belated Housewarming for the Homecoming Queen

....being a fond housewarming gift, long overdue, for a very warm house indeed.

The problem with this itinerant lifestyle I am currently leading is that it plays havoc with my best intentions for getting quilts to their deserving owners.  (This problem is compounded because, as anyone who has known me for 20 minutes can tell you, I am 99% good intentions.)  This quilt, for instance, was started last Thanksgiving nearly, and has been riding in my car and gone back and forth to Texas (twice) and several times Michigan, among lesser travels (like to the Joann and the liquor store and such).  But it is finally done and mailed, and high time too, as its new owner has long been hosting quite a number of us, for going on 30 years now, and could probably do with a loud and public THANK YOU instead of the usual 6-pack-of-beer-and-Boursin-cheese-offerings, which is kind of my standard.

The finished flimsy top, in which you can already see I'm going to have trouble with excessive fabric wiggliness.

This is the back.  I'm not sure what possessed me to use pink binding, but it worked out okay.

The earliest recollections of my college chum Gramsy involved, I think, the Cap'n's birthday party which I crashed with some of my scruffy Clark House roommates.  Or maybe it was the "90210" parties she and her roomies hosted at her house, but surely, if not those, it was the half-a-million rock shows our greater community of rock aficionados went to at our local rock pub.  Whatever it was, I am glad we were cemented together casually down at school, because it was when we all moved back up to the city that I began to know her in earnest, and love her for her droll wit and hilariously exasperated take on what was, at that time, our fresh adulthood.  Even down at school, though, one could recognize a fabulous hostess when she offered you a potato-based casserole.

WELCOME TO DINNER WOULD YOU LIKE A CRUDITE OR A PIG IN A BLANKET?

And speaking of adulthood, our Gramsy was always a pioneer there - while still in school she and her roomies were among the first to decorate their abode like an actual human would (instead of, say, a Clark House resident).  I recall gingham curtains, and strategically hung contact paper that looked *just* like wallpaper, and dinner parties.  Dinner parties!  How classy!  (Even if they *might* have been parties dedicated to our suburban casserole-and-pimento-loaf-eating roots, wherein lady fingers made with Wonder Bread and ham salad *might* have figured prominently.)  Later, back in the city, she would be one of the first people I knew with a comfy couch that was not inherited from parents; the first I knew to use honest-to-god movers; and among the first of us ladies to buy property, in the form of a super kickass converted bakery that became the site of some very vigorous baking-and-drinking sessions, and rock-show pre-gaming.

And of course, at that point, there was still rock n roll.  This photo booth gem of Nikita, Gramsy and me was taken at the long-lamented, dearly departed Lounge Ax, immediately before the Old 97s took to the stage in probably their "Too Far to Care" era (so, like 1997.)  Gramsy's husband was not a fan, but we were!

"What's so great / About the barrier reef? / What's so fine / About Art?"

And let us not forget Prom Party, a few years later, which Gramsy (as an authentic, actual, honest-to-god former high school Homecoming Queen) was responsible for handing her tiara off to the newly crowned winner. Though I do not think she relinquished her crown, and nor should she have! I mean, look at this beauty and her stellar court (via POLAROID).

The Cap'n, Nikita and me, and Gramsy (seated as is her royal prerogative.) If the sign didn't tell you this was the 90s, the shoes surely would have.

And I forget when this even happened, but it was somewhere in that era too: the Cap'n' and Gramsy as....Siegfried and Roy. Replete with sequins, self-tanner, and furry chest hair. The sort of halloween costume which is still spoken of in hushed, reverent tones, all these years later:

the Cap'n n Gramsy as Siegfried and Roy.  SIEGFRIED AND ROY.  (And that's Bean as the Swedish Chef.)

But all good things must end.....or, at least, be shuffled around a bit, when Gramsy and family moved two hours south to the birthplace of our friendship: our college town.  While this has resulted in fewer rock shows attended together (and, let us not kid each other - the couch is a much stronger lure these days anyway) and a lot less furry costume chest hair (I PRESUME), it has not entirely impeded our desire or ability to gather round in Gramsy's kitchen, sending her pre-teen son scuttling for his bedroom, mowing through her crudites like a plague of drunk locusts; or lounging in a hungover sort of way on comfy couches, watching HGTV with Gramsy's hubby; or  hanging on her patio in clement weather, shooting the shit endlessly and cackling like the scraggly old stew hens we are now.  And all this despite the fact that she is a full-on University professor who is advancing towards becoming Dr. Gramsy, and does not technically have time for our shenanigans, yet always seems to have time, anyway.  As long as you don't bring up the horrifying spectre of (whispered) [[[animatronics]]], which will get you banished forevermore from Gramdrews' Home for Wayward Girls. (Ask her about her trip to Disneyworld. As long as you have someplace else to stay).

Gramsy and I- oops! -wearing the same jacket.  You can tell we're adults at this point because there's food on the table.

About that nickname: her current place was dubbed The Gramdrews' Home For Wayward Girls, the former part of which title is a combo of Gramsy's and her hubby's names, and the latter part of which I swiped from my sister Lulu's old house, which was also a way station for travelers and those in search of periodic accommodations, only she called it the home for WAYWEIRD girls.  Despite being a borrowed sobriquet, this suited Gramsy's place so perfectly well that one of the Wayward Girls in question, the lovely and talented DB, made a logo for one particularly hotly anticipated gathering.  As may be expected, t-shirts were also produced.

Graphic courtesy of DB, who I think had some time on her hand that week. 

So how do you make a quilt that says "I feel more at home at your house than I have at most of my own apartments?"  When ruminating about what to make for Gramsy, I knew I would work with the current Home for Wayward Girls color scheme - fortunately, these are very homey indeed: feathery taupe, creamy cappuchino, buttery yellows and carrot cake orange; fireplace grays, frayed denim blue, heavy cream.  The sort of color scheme you may want to sink into and never leave.

A lounge session at the current Home for Wayward Girls - actual footage.  Snort!  Get it?? 

And what pattern?  TRUE CONFESSIONS: once upon a time, Gramsy herself was nudging me towards the venerable midwestern mid-century art of Charley Harper.  And while I loved the work and it suited her so well, I have yet to do anything very representational like his stuff, and so.... I bailed early on that idea (sorry, Gramsy! Someday when I am better at applique, I will make you a Harp-illow. )

Instead, I was drawn to the classic Granny's Square pattern for a couple of reasons - first, I love the traditional coziness and thought I could modernize it up a bit with some transparency color work (to make the colors look like they were layers of, say, scotch tape on top of each other, progressively darker, or combining a yellow and a blue by using a green to bridge them.  Check out more of these here.)  Results were a little mixed here, but I had a good time trying to get the color interplay right.

And second, there is a tradition in Log Cabin quilting of using a red square as the very center patch, to represent hearth and home.  And I thought, if any quilt should contain a reference to being a center of love and homey-ness, Gramsy's quilt surely should, since she (and her hubby, who also works with itinerants) has always provided that for so many of us fly-by-night passers-through-town.  I tried a bunch of different reds, and also a staggered layout, before settling on a deep dotty rust for all of the center patches, and a more spaced out and gridded 4x5 layout for the blocks.

In progress on the apt floor in Houston, which I left in.... February 2017. And of course, it took me about 3 minutes before I started thinking of this pattern as "Gramsy's Squares."

I did have a little bit of trouble with the top, which I had sashed together in a way that guaranteed it would be wiggly when I sewed it....and then I doubled down on the dumb by quilting some of the edges before I had done part of the middle, which is like a cardinal sin in quilting, because it leaves you with THIS little nightmare;

This green and yellow square was all wiggly no matter what I did, but I'd already sewn all around it so it had no place to go.

And by god, if I was gonna make Gramsy a quilt, it was going to be of the snuggliest couch-lounging variety I could manage, which meant lots of double-gauze for the back.  While I love double-gauze with my whole heart, it done me wrong (again) because it multiplied my issues with the wiggly top by ALSO being wiggly, and refusing to be basted into place in straight lines.  Which led to this silly looking bit here:

Forgive me, Gramsy.  The lines, they are crooked, though I tried very hard. But I was out-wiggled.

But overall, I can live with the silly and the wiggly in order to gain the snuggly, and also I really liked these colors together, but turns out it was because it reminded me of an album cover put out by a band I really liked, back in their short-lived heyday circa 2004.)

The back is all double-gauze of subdued shades. What does this remind me of?  Oh yeah....

... early 2000s alternative rock, of course.

In the end, the wiggles were mostly compensated for by the desirable washed-quilt scrunching up....though that yellow and green block draws my eye eternally and will be the death of me, dangit.

Once resewn and washed, the wiggles subsided somewhat.  Transparency attempts in evidence here (I hope.)

And the label...well, of course, the label could only be one thing, and with apologies to DB for my somewhat fast and loose embroidered interpretation of her careful lettering, I think it nevertheless captures the spirit of what she was going for:

My homage to DB's original brilliance. Was gonna add a "EST. 1990" at the bottom but that made me feel too OLD.

And speaking of old: tiny infant children at Christmas at the original Home for Wayweird Girls, Urbana, maybe like 1993.  That's the Cap'n in green, me in back, Gramsy at 3:00, and Chella at beer-thirty.

Little did these young ladies realize that they would be carrying on in much the same manner, 25+ years hence.  Though if they'd stop to think about it, they'd know that this was really among the best possible outcomes, and well worth the time invested.

The Gramsy Squares quilt takes its final ride in the car, where it had lived for the better part of a year.
It seems kinda relieved to be going home, no?

So big stupid hugs and potato-based casseroles to you, Dr. Gramsy, and many many thanks to you for your willingness to open your home up to all sorts of itinerants, and also feed them a lot of the time, and also for generally being awesome and hilarious and sensible to a refreshing and amazing degree for all of these years.  I promise I will try my best to never bring up [[[animatronics]]] ever again, even though your reaction to them is so, so funny, if you will promise to forgive me my wiggly fabrics and my silly lines, and also the tardiness of this humble offering.  Consider this my contribution to the clean bedding stash for the next lucky passers-through.....hope I am among them soon!

If you squint, you can't even see that yellow and green block up there,
which is very wiggly to this day but it doesn't bother me.
Very much.

I'll bring the beer & Boursin - save me a seat on the patio!

Besos always,
Astrid