Dodging a bullet
For the last several years, I've thought about quilting. I love the idea of it; I love the idea of turning geometry into artwork. :) I love the idea of making things beautiful and neat and tidy and orderly, or going with the "crazy quilting" thing and making order out of chaos. Or chaos out of order! In short, it seems just awesome.
And thus I have stayed far, far, far away from it. I own a rotary cutter for sewing, but that's as close as I've ever gotten. I have lots and lots of hobbies, and never feel like I have enough time for any of them! Quilting would just be one more thing that would have to fight for its time with me, and I don't want to give up my knitting or cross-stitching or crocheting or reading or writing or World of Warcraft. (Although maybe that's something I should think about -- if I ever stop playing WoW, I can start quilting. It might help with the withdrawal pangs. But it's not too likely -- I just got myself a second account. >_>)
Anyway, recently -- probably due to my newfound lust for Vera Bradley bags (I own a book cover and three different bags and a wallet now. My only defense is that, since they're all in a discontinued fabric, they were severely discounted -- and also they're amazingly perfect as knitting bags, since they have tons of pockets but no zippers to catch on your work!) -- I started thinking that it might be cool to make my own bags and book covers. After all, then I could have bags and book covers with sheep-printed fabric!
After a while I ended up looking at books (I hear Eleanor Burns is awesome) and eyeing fabric and very, very nearly buying a self-healing mat and one of those enormous rulers. I held off at the last minute, and the urge seems to have passed... sort of.
I've had a bunch of Wool-Ease around forever; I had plans to make a mitered-square blanket with it. However, the mitered-square blanket has been languishing under the bed for months, and I had all these quilt pictures in my head, and I thought, "Scrap Log Cabin Blanket GO!" Two squares later, I haven't even made the slightest hint of a dent in the Wool-Ease. Not even a little. A square is about 80g, and I have a total of 2315g. It looks like I'll be able to make roughly 28 squares (without reclaiming the wool from the Powers of Two blanket); it would take 36 to make a queen-sized bedspread. On the bright side, squares take up very little space around the house and are easy to do while reading. On the not-so-bright side, I bet I won't be finished with this until September. On the other bright side, September is when blankets start becoming needed around the house...
Anyway, here's the other way in which quilts have insinuated themselves...
I own this beautiful book of cross-stitching patterns by (or inspired by?) Paula Vaughan -- one for each month of the year. This is the very beginning of the February quilt. I'll need to get more floss if I'm going to finish this one, but I can get along for quite a while just on the floss out of the stash.
...sigh. It sometimes seems like I'm never going to dig my way out of my stash or finish any projects.
But at least I haven't started quilting yet.
