glittergoods

return of procrasti-pillow

Shockingly, the second loopy pillow did not follow my failed-sophomore-effort rule, though this is perhaps because there was enough failed effort involved in the first go-round. I even managed to make the cover a little bigger, though am told by certain significant others that they are still too stuffed. (I don't know what happens, I swear, I cut them out the right size & then the ease just melts away. It's like magic, ruinous, irritating, sewing magic.) Better overstuffed than flabby, I say!

Thank you for all the wonderful comments about my free motion quilting. I'm finding it both easier & harder than I imagined, which is to say that I quickly learned that the whole effort has a lot to do with a relaxed but controlled touch, which is easier said than done. It actually reminds me of spinning, especially the incredibly tense hands & forearms of the novice part. Ow, a little bit. But it's addictive, plus more forgiving than the straight-line quilting I'd been doing on the pillows, so I'm hoping that the more I try it, the more natural it will feel.

Good thing I'm already planning my next one.

procrasti-pillow

Snaps & I continue to get along so well that my productivity claim of yesterday is actually just about true.  I can't say that I am necessarily working on things in order of importance, but sometimes just getting back into the making groove is the most important thing, I tell myself  (though now I have the Pro-crast-tin-a-ting song in my head, probably because my daughter loves that Audrarox album more than I love snaps & so we listen to it all the time lately.  Unless you have your own small child, all the time probably doesn't have quite the depth of meaning to you that I intend, except for those people who, like me, spent their formative years doing things like filling up extra space at the end of mix tapes with Bizarre Love Triangle over & over & over &, yes, over.  (If my husband reads this entry, he will be all "right, USED TO.")).

The other thing, besides snaps I mean, that I wish I had enough time to be inspired by right now, is the amazing Last-Minute Patchwork book that everyone is talking about.   I have only had the chance to flip through it a couple of times, but the book is so beautifully put together (&, really, did we doubt?  Also, holy moly, check out the new fabric line.) that even just a quick picture skim is enough to send me off in a million different directions.  I'm very taken with her version of the stacked coin quilt, & while there shouldn't really be are definitely not any quilts on my horizon until after the holidays (& all of the other Imaginary Quilts are yelling take a number! at it anyway), I can totally justify making a stacked coin pillow or two.

Though are they still stacked if I run the strip this way?  I don't feel that they're all that coin-esque, either, which is fine because this pillow ultimately ended up being less about the stacked coins & more about me deciding that last night was the night to learn free motion quilting (where "learn" means "figure out how to do this one specific thing I have in mind, never mind the fundamental techniques or etc").  The idea of doing this kind of freehand loopy quilting over an entire quilt is pretty daunting (for now), but it's a lot of fun at pillow scale. (And, yes, this one has snaps on the back too.  Did you doubt?)

I do love that elephant fabric, don't I?

I've been having an unusually busy meeting schedule lately -- event planning, new design projects, fun stuff all around -- & in a domino-effect kind of way, all of this bustling talking activity is spilling over into some actual productivity around here, hallelujah.

It's actually a complete cheat for me to put this picture up under a comment about my productivity, because I pieced & quilted the pillow top about a month ago, then just sat around & looked at it in mild annoyance as I tried to decide how to manage the back. I like my pillows a bit overstuffed (this one is a little more crammed than I'd consider ideal, but I've discovered that these particular inserts do smash down some with use, so maybe I'll just stack a few books or one of the kids on it for a while), & the whole ribbon tie situation wasn't keeping things as neatly tucked in as I wanted.

I had a brief flirtation with a lapped zipper that ended in -- not tragedy, exactly, but if that zipper had been a date I would have talked to him a couple of times afterwards in a half-hearted way about going out again & then started deleting his voicemails unheard, & maybe we'd give it another try sometime down the road when our timing was better, but in the meantime I'm going out with his really cute & stylish friend from down the block, snaps.