I missed blogging last week, but this week I have a finished quilt to share. No photos of the finish, though...I got too eager today in packing it up for the shower and forgot!
But I'll tell the story anyways and you'll see the top, which isn't much different than the finished quilt.
My niece Adrian is due at the end of next month and my hubby has ALWAYS called her "monster" because when her mom was pregnant with her she gained a fair amount of weight. He called her mom Godzilla. And Godzilla apparently has a daughter in one movie or another, called Godzuki. So he called her Godzuki, which shortened into Zuki, which eventually he just changed to Monster.
(It may be lost on him that calling a pregnant lady Godzilla is a bad choice, but it is NOT lost on me. Years later, it's kinda funny, but she isn't exactly on board with it, so we keep the nickname on the down low!)
So what are you going to make for a pregnant young woman that your husband calls Monster all the time? Yes, of course, a monster quilt!
A few years back, I found this pattern and, with her in mind, purchased it. (The designer doesn't have it available on their website, so you can shop here, at a somewhat local quilt shop of mine instead, if you need a copy for yourself!) When searching through my patterns at home, I found it - I'd forgotten I had it!
So off to my actually local (the one I linked above is about an hour away) quilt shop and purchased the fabrics to make flowered monsters. I mean, it's for a baby girl, so that makes sense, right? And the three tone-on-tone-ish prints are the arms and legs. The black with dots is the background. A little more space-like, but whatever. That was last October.
The pattern has a nice coloring sheet inside, which helps since there are at least three of each body section (ears, eyes, nose, mouth, arms/torso/feet) and you can mix and match them all.
I actually copied, cut and pasted and then colored so I knew what I was supposed to be doing. (Note Salem highlighting the stack of fabrics at the top edge!)
In November I started cutting and sewing. The pattern is confusing in parts, but there are a LOT of pieces and their corresponding numbers to keep track of. I sewed a few things wrong, but not many. In general, though, this pattern is marked as "moderate" skill level...the actual sewing isn't difficult (confident beginner, I'd say), but the instructions require the mind and organizational skill of a seasoned engineer. I'm a microbiologist and it didn't quite cut it. There was some swearing and hair pulling.
But then the monsters started emerging...
...nope, wait, that's a Freddie.
And then the project stalled out a little bit. I decided to try to get a quilt done for my nephew for Christmas (it's still not done) and let this one sit. Well...
In January, I realized my deadline was drawing near (the shower was earlier today), so I needed to get back to this quilt (the top for the nephew was done at this point, too)...
The monsters being tall and skinny meant there needed to be some effort to get the quilt closer to square and I decided flowered hearts would be just the ticket. (I could also have done the colored prints, but that might have required more math than I wanted to do at the time...)
And then I had a top!
I pieced the back using the floral (figuring it was less likely to get used later) and a little of the black to make sure it was large enough to fit on the longarm. (It's about 45x45.)
Lily "helped."
It sat a few more weeks and I put it on the longarm last weekend. And fought and fought and fought with it. The first pass was great. The second and third were horrendous. I hate that it's so temperamental. But I got it done. And bound. And given away. All without any additional photographs.
(Oops!)
As I said, the shower was earlier today, but that was CHAOS. It was a couple's shower and there were people there from ages less than a year to close to 80. Men and women. LOTS of them. And they asked that we don't wrap the gifts (nope, mine went in a gift bag...no way am I gonna let everybody and their slimy toddler put their hands on this), as they'd rather display them than spend time opening them. Call me old fashioned, but I thought that kinda odd and maybe a little rude. Also, seeing what the mom-to-be gets is always fun for me.
So I don't know if she's even opened it yet. I suppose the hubby is going to get a call or text because she will know it's his fault this pattern was chosen. And she'll give him crap for it. (He didn't attend the shower - the May men are adamant that baby showers are not for men...)
In other news, I read three books (and a half) in the past two weeks.
Set in sorta present-day Barcelona, a young-ish man inherits his aunt's farm/estate (he lives in the US) and travels there to sort it out. He wasn't even aware that she was alive (his father told him she died at 16) and he wants to unravel the mystery of why.
Of course, there are bad guys who want the land for questionable purposes and they try to unalive him, he falls in love with a beautiful local reporter and other things you'd never expect in real life. But it was interesting at least.
The title refers to an old time punishment - there was a king somewhere who was given many lions as gifts from visiting royals and it got to a point where he had many. And prisoners were sent to "walk the lions" - I think the book refers to it as a reward, but I'm not sure it was... I'm not sure how this lines up with the story in the book, but sometimes I guess I can just be extra thick?
This was another that was on my shelf and I thought I'd read, but don't remember it if I have. Another I'm glad I kept and gave that chance to!
This one is set in the 1920s, on the east coast of the US. An elderly man has requested the presence of his lawyer to draw up a new will, as he will be remarrying at the request of his dead wife. His children think it's a sham, as his wife has been dead many years and the woman he is to marry has a niece who claims to be talking with the dead wife.
Sounds fishy, right?
It flips back in time to when the lawyer and son were younger men (in their 20's or so), as there is a connection between the new wife and the lawyer, though the son doesn't know it. As the story unfolds, we see more and more connections between all the characters and, at the fairly predictable end, we see all of them.
It was a good, quick read.
And lastly, the worst book I've read so far this year. The year is young, but I suspect this one will stay near the top of that disgraceful list for a while.
While promoted as the story of Anna Freud, son of famous Sigmund, it is more about him than anything else. Somewhat told through her eyes, it is still less of her than him. I have no idea if she had friends as a child, no idea where or how she was educated outside of reading his research, only how she interacted with him. As she gets older, we do learn a little more about her own life, but it is always overshadowed by his need for her, or at least her perception of this, and her return to assist him in one way or another.
But I will say that he, Sigmund, looms large as an asshat. I know a little of his work, but to read it in this book, why he wasn't burned at the stake is beyond me. I guess we've learned a lot since his theories, but still. Maddening. Father of mansplaining.
I've started another, but it's another "literary" choice that is working hard to fill it's big britches. And causing me no shortness of frustrations.
Anyways. Time to go finish dinner.
Lily snuggled me this way for about 3 minutes the other night. She's a daddy's girl, so if I get any love, it's short lived. I'll take it! (She growled her way under that quilt - it was touching her, but she wanted under it, so I guess what else is there to do but yell at it? She is quite the opinionated little princess.)
Happy quilting!
Katie
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