Playing Frog

"On our quilting retreats, we get a little crazy, when someone screws up we say, 'what are you doing...??' 'Oh, just playing frog, rip-it, rip-it.'" Honestly, will the craziness never cease!?

Vickie shared this gem with me tonight, it was really adorable, because I was playing m-f-ing frog all night long tonight. The seam ripper really became my best friend. I think it was because I was getting a little overwhelmed. The type of quilt I am working on is called a "Log Cabin" quilt (no, it's not a quilting style exclusively for for Gay Republicans) why it is called this, I do not know, and again, I am not sure if this is an official quilting term, or something Vickie came up with on her own. Is there an official quilting language? I have yet to find this out. Unless, I am becoming immersed in it and learning it without knowing it, like when Bart Simpson went to France and learned to speak French without trying...

The Log Cabin quilt starts with a small square, a focal point. In the case of my quilt, it's a witch, since I am making a Halloween quilt. The small square gets a border, then the border gets a different border, and so on and so on, as many borders as you like. My witch square has three borders. Well, sewing this squares with borders was simple enough, sewing strips of fabric on a square, do it, done. In total, my quilt has nine witches, nine squares, all with three borders. Then, a larger different border is added, sewing all the squares together, and eventually, getting all these squares together, you end up with your quilt. I had no problems with my seams when I was sewing the squares, it was simple quick work, however, sewing all three squares together with the different border proved difficult, because it just got so damn big.

Suddenly, the machine would start to squeak. Vickie would come over, tell me to move out of the chair, she'd fiddle around a bit, solve the problem (usually a machine threading probably, he machine a Janome, for the curious, is super fancy and has a thread ripper on the side for when you finished your seam, well, I was getting a little overzealous with the thread ripper and in my enthusiasm, I would un-thread the whole damn machine, whoops. After doing that twice I was instructed to use the scissors, and only the scissors.) Another issue, a bigger issues was on these big pieces of fabric, I would get it bunched up, and sew the back to the front making a big ball of fabric and thread. Vickie would had over the trusty seam ripper, a small blue tool with a sharp claw-type apparatus at the end. She would just put the longer sharp end under the seam, and rip-it, rip-it. I only had to do it twice, but it was on big pieces of fabric, so it totally sucked, because I did each seam separately. I didn't have the confidence to just rip like Vickie did, I didn't want to accidentally rip my fabric.

Finally, after stopping and starting and ripping and re-sewing, a major chunk of the quilt was completed tonight. All that needs to be done is the "batting" a process I am entirely in the dark about. It is adding the soft, fluffy middle to make it, you know, a blanket. Vickie did the batting on my sister's quilt, so I didn't see how that came together. And then the binding, which is had sewing all the edges together. Which Vickie said she is going to teach, and then "let" me do. "Good luck with that," my mother said when I told her of the task I had in front of me. She knows me too well. "It's just like hemming." Vickie said. Yea, I don't hem... "And it's nice because then you can watch TV while you do it!" Super. I do love TV.

I am hoping to get the quilt home on Monday to begin the binding. So, I can get started on something that makes my fingers sore just thinking about it.

I left my mother-in-law's tonight covered in sweat (it's really hot in her sewing room, yes, she has a room exclusively devoted to sewing.) and bits of string, which I didn't want to pick off of myself. They are like badges of honor. I am tackling this old, square, lame-o hobby, and I am winning the battle! I am making this thread my bitch! And it is strewn about my clothes to prove it, like limbs on a battlefield! Ha!