The Bitchy Stitcher

Ain't that a kick in the head?

2012-03-01T07:00:00.002-05:00

Many of you who read this humble blog are aware of and read the other project in which I play a small part: Generation Q. For those who are unfamiliar, Generation Q, or GenQ as we like to call it around GenQ HQ, is an online magazine launched last summer by Jake Finch and Melissa Thompson Maher, the fine ladies who thought it was a good idea to publish whatever the hell I felt like writing every other month in Quilter's Home, where they were co-editors-in-chief. Of course, Quilter's Home bit it, most likely due to the fact that I wrote articles about the inevitable zombie apocalypse and once used the phrase "appliquéing penises all over Jesus."

You would have thought that when they decided to strike out on their own and create a new lifestyle magazine for contemporary and modern quilters that they would stay the hell away from me, but no. They asked me to come on board and I took on the role of Creative Director and Resident Humorist. We launched our website last July and I have written more ramblings for them every month since. But our goal has always been to get back into print. As Creative Director, I will be working on the actual design and layout of our first issue, an issue we hope to have printed by Quilt Market in Kansas City in May and on newsstands by July.

But the thing is, we are trying to do this without backing from a large, corporate entity. See, just about every quilt magazine out there is owned by some massive publishing conglom-co, which has its advantages money-wise, but can also result in tired, watered-down, same ol'-same ol' content. We want to do this independently, which will allow us to keep our voice and our vision. We won't be beholden to corporate overlords that don't understand the market, that don't get that there are quilters out there who want something fun and who just maybe like to read something thought-provoking or have a laugh while they get inspired by a cool pattern or fabric.

But, of course, none of us has any money. That's because none of us have jobs. What we do have is a shitload of talent, experience, and drive - and a passion to create something that reflects the newest waves in quilting.

To that end we have launched a Kickstarter campaign. If you are not familiar with Kickstarter, it is a web site where people with projects to fund can raise money. But it's an all-or-nothing proposition. You set a fundraising goal and set a deadline. If enough people pledge money to meet that goal before the deadline, you get the money. If you fall short, you don't. So, if you pledge, you will not be charged the amount of your pledge until and unless the goal is met. If not, you are never charged. And you are not expected to just donate money out of the goodness of your heart. You get something for your dollars - from a copy of the magazine, to a subscription, to an actual quilt made by one of us (probably not me, but you never know!).

So, if you can, please at least take a look at our Kickstarter page. There's even a video, and if you wait a couple minutes, there's a section with me in it, desperately trying not to look bloated and consumptive. When I showed my husband the video, and he got to the end of my part, he burst into applause and demanded the link so he could show "everybody I've ever met." You know a man loves you when he wants to show off his wife desperately trying not to look bloated and consumptive.

Obviously, I am shilling for dollars here. I know damn well that money is tight for all of us, but I hope that many of you will find even a $5 or $10 donation worth it. And I'll give you one final reason why helping to fund this publication is a good thing: I SAVE MY BEST SHIT FOR PRINT.

The Garment District

2012-02-27T11:42:00.001-05:00

I was full of grandiose plans to lose 20 pounds before Market, but that hasn't happened because of being sick for so long. I still start coughing and hacking if I get the least bit winded, so exercise is out and then I feel sorry for myself because I am still blowing alien life forms out of my nose every 17 seconds, so I eat popovers. I have a thing about eating popovers when I am going through long periods of stress or discomfort. Some people need chocolate. I self-medicate with puffy bread.

So it's looking less and less like I will be skinny 3 months from now, particularly since I've managed to gain a few pounds (mmmm...popovers....) during my convalescence. How is a fat chick supposed to dress for being seen in public? Baggy, stained yoga pants and oversized t-shirts from Target are probably not going to cut it.

I used to love wearing tunics and leggings and I've seen people even bigger than me manage to carry this look off, so I started perusing catalogs. But everything is either cut wrong or too expensive, so on a lark I started looking at patterns. Not that I would actually make one or anything, because that would be insane. I am a hard person to size because my boobs are not as proportionally big as the rest of me, and I have no waist and a round belly. All those skinny people that make a living telling fat people what to wear say to emphasize the slimmest part of you, by which they mean the waist or the area right below your boobs. But from my armpits to my crotch, its all basically one big blob. There is no slimmest part.

But then I saw this and temporarily lost my mind.

What cool sleeves! What a flattering shape! And it says perfect for beginners! Surely if I can do curved piecing I can sew in a fucking sleeve, right? Oh, okay, what the hell.

And it was a breeze. No problems, no frustrations. I whipped that thing together in a couple days and it turned out perfect.

It looks like ass on me, of course. but on a hanger? Hot shit.

Now the girls had gotten quite used to hearing me say that I could make them skirts but nothing else because I didn't know how to make anything else, and as soon as I finished this and stepped back to admire my work, they jumped on me and demanded dresses. With gathers and zippers and shit. So I let them pick out fabric and we chose another pattern, and yesterday afternoon, I got started.

I worked on it periodically until the girls went to bed, and then I focussed on it while I "watched" the Oscars. I used to care deeply about the Oscars, back when I was child-free and had time to see the films and could stay up late with my friends getting shit-faced on champagne and trying to outdo each other with dumb celebrity jokes. Now I can't afford the hangover, but I still feel compelled to watch, and by "watch" I mean "have it on in the background while I do far more interesting things with my time." I was done before Meryl won for that movie I will never, ever see because at this point in my life, films about British politics are probably lower on the list than films about American politics. Or anything about any politics. I really fucking hate politics.

So it was with great pleasure that I got to tell Miss Devon this morning that her dress was all done:

Now it's Harper's turn, and then I will try again for myself. I have picked out two more patterns that look good in theory, but will surely fail upon practical application. And after I spend all that money on patterns and fabric I might have just enough left over for a new pair of yoga pants and a t-shirt from Target.

A question having nothing at all to do with quilting

2012-02-16T09:22:00.000-05:00

I've been losing a bit of sleep over this and since the internet seems always so forthcoming with unsolicited advice, I thought perhaps I'd solicit some and see if together we can solve an odd problem.

Every day I drive my youngest daughter to daycare, 20 minutes away, then drop Harper off at school. In the afternoons, Harper gets picked up first and then we ride out to pick up Devon. There are several routes we could take to get to Devon's daycare, but the one I finally settled on has the least amount of traffic and seems to get us there and back the fastest, even if it isn't precisely the shortest drive. Shortly before we get to the neighborhood where her daycare provider lives, we drive along about two miles of windy, slightly hilly 2-lane road. It's not mountainous or anything and not full of crazy dead man's curves, but is just hilly and windy enough that there is no passing allowed along it's entire length. There is no shoulder anywhere.

After this road we get to a light and make a left onto a larger, divided road that has a wide shoulder on both sides. A few days ago, I noticed, as we turned onto this road, a young mother and two little girls—I'm guessing around 5 and 7 years old—walking along the shoulder. Since the girls had backpacks, I assumed they were coming home from school, though, knowing where the nearest elementary school is from that spot, they had already been walking quite a ways. Then as we drove back along the two-lane road, they were there, trying to navigate the non-shoulder. The little one wasn't paying much attention and as I came around the curve and they came into view, she was well into the road. If I had been distracted by anything at that point, I would have hit her.

I have now seen them every day this week, and yesterday, despite my vigilance as I was driving, I felt I came too close to them again. I am terrified something is going to happen to one—or more—of them. Since I have driven this same route every day for over a year and this is the first I've seen them, I'm assuming that mom has lost her car for some reason. I would think the kids would be on a bus route, considering how far they are walking, but there are clearly circumstances I do not know at play.

The most obvious thing would be to offer them a ride, but I only have room for one more person in my car, not three. I am never in a position where I can pull over and ask if there's any way I can help - divided road or no shoulder. I can't be sure what school they are coming from (or even if they are coming from a school) so it seems less that helpful to blanket all the area schools with letters or calls saying, "There are two kids who need a ride but I don't know who they are." The mom might not even accept a ride from me - even if I had a nice big mini-van and had the room - because who the hell am I? Hell, I'd be scared to get into my car if a strange woman approached me and offered me a ride. It's full of used tissues and trash that I'm too lazy or busy to get rid of. It looks like a junkie's car, except for the cute kids in the back.

So, I'm stuck. I don't know what to do. Maybe there's nothing I can do. Maybe she'll get her car back soon and it won't matter anymore. But the thought of a little one being hit by a car on her way home from school is plaguing me, and if there is something I can do I want to try to do it. I just don't know what it is.

Any ideas?

A Bit of Ointment for Those Problem Areas

2012-02-15T06:00:00.014-05:00

Facebook
You all know Facebook, right? Fun little place, where we can all interact and have fun together in a way we can't really do here? I have 1152 "fans" on my blog's Facebook page, and I'm not absolutely certain how many of those people actually read this blog or even know it exists.

There is this phenomenon on Facebook where people can start a page called, oh, I don't know, "Mayonnaise is AWESOME!", and if your friend clicks "like" on that page it shows up in your Feed. "Megan likes 'Mayonnaise is AWESOME!'" And you even get to comment on her liking: "I know, right? Mayonnaise IS awesome!!!!!! LOLOLOLOL." So, naturally, being the mayo lover you are, you go right on over to that page and click "like" too, so all of your friends will know that you are an unapologetic aficionado of egg-n-oil emulsions.

However, what neither you nor your hair-trigger clicker finger friends have noticed is that Mayonnaise is AWESOME! is actually the name of a thrash metal band from Cleveland that paints penises on kittens during their live shows and promotes the penis-painting-on-kittens lifestyle on their Facebook page. Now, you wake up one fine, sunny morning and open up FB only to find your feed filled with posts like "WE WILL PAINT WEENIES ON ALL TEH KITTEHZ AND MAKE YOUR MOMMA CRY!" And you are, naturally, horrified.

Some people will take this as an opportunity to belatedly edify themselves as to what the holy hell Mayonnaise is AWESOME! is all about with perhaps a quick Google search or a look-see at the rest of the info on the band's Facebook page. And then, determining that the mission, aesthetic, and philosophy behind Mayonnaise is AWESOME! is not for them, will boldly, but quietly, unlike the page. Others, however, unwilling or unable to do this, will feel the need to comment instead, with such gems as:

"What does this have to do with mayonnaise?"
"Miracle Whip is so wrong! Am I right?"
"What is this band everyone is talking about?"
and, of course:
"You know, I'm no prude, but all this weenie talk is just too much!"

This is what happens to me a lot. Apparently, lots of people have "liked" my page because they like the name "The Bitchy Stitcher" so I guess they feel like it's something they can identify with. And then I share some photos that a reader sent me of knitted boxer shorts with some very clever appendage-pouches built in and I get someone saying, "I'm no prude, but no more pictures please." Or a reference to something that was on the blog gets commented on and somebody pipes up, "This blog sounds great! Can someone give me the link?" And I'm not a naturally kind and diplomatic person, so I have to dunk my head in a bucket of cold water, take a couple shots of whiskey, and count to 100 very slowly before I can answer without being rude.

So, quilters. Please. Before you click like on that page called "The Slutty Sewist" or "The Patchwork Puta," please take a moment to be sure you are actually going to like what ends up in your news feed and whether you do indeed like what those people do outside of Facebook. And, by the way, if you ever have the notion to say, "I'm no prude, but..." — you're a prude.

Swaps
I'm new to the whole swap thing, but the few times that I've mentioned it, the response from readers has always been, "I HATE swaps and I'll never do another after I quilted an entire Cadillac DeVille - life size - and my swap partner sent me a used tissue and a severed ear." So when my GenQ cohorts were all hot to sponsor a swap, I said, "Okay, but everybody tells me they hate them!" But others among us had participated in swaps and had no issues, so we forged ahead.

For any newbies out there, this is the basic idea behind a swap: someone gathers names of people who want to participate and then matches up everyone into pairs. Those pairs exchange contact info and agree to make each other something according to the theme or guidelines of the swap. However, the laws of swapping apparently dictate that what you will receive from your swap partner will be in inverse proportion to what you send. So, if you work your butt off to make something awesome, your partner will take a dump in an envelope and mail it to you (first class).

The obvious thing here would be to advise people that unless they are going to put some effort and creativity into it they shouldn't bother, but I'm thinking beyond that, because I still think they seem like fun. Maybe, in order to participate in a swap, you should have to provide references. "Yes, I did a swap with Arlene and she made a hand-pieced hexagon mini-quilt that is also a relief map of Bolivia. Plus, she added brownies." "Oh, Barbara? She sent me the paper she tore off a lint roller. I'm pretty sure it had pubic hair on it." If your references don't check out, you can't participate.

The only other way that I can see to prevent Swap Sadness is to include some form of public humiliation, like a special blog where people can post pictures of the shit they got in a swap. Swap Flops, or something. (Note to self: this could work. Nab that URL now!)

So, quilters. Please. Before you sign up to participate in a swap, ask yourself this: Am I an anal retentive over-achiever who says at least once a day, "WHY CAN'T OTHER PEOPLE JUST DO THINGS RIGHT? LIKE I DO?" Or, are you a lazy, shiftless ass munch who does everything at the last minute and doesn't give a crap about anyone else? Because, if you are the latter, the rest of us will see you on swapflops.blogspot.com.

Gimme the blue pill, Larry!

2012-02-10T10:00:00.001-05:00

I am a 42-year-old woman. I have given birth to two daughters. I have made a (small) name for myself as a writer. I am at my peak intellectually and creatively. I am happy, sane, and - lung chunks aside - relatively healthy. I am no longer a teenager, as far as I can tell.

SO WHY DO I HAVE A GIMUNGOUS ZIT ON MY CHIN? AGAIN?

I'll tell you why. Because the Endocrine Gods have decided to fuck with me, that's why. Never mind that I'm still years away from menopause, my body has decided that my early forties are a great time to mess around with the chemicals that not only control my reproductive cycle but also play a far too large role in my moods and the state of the skin on my chinological area.

I have not had a period since early December, and that ought to be a good thing, because periods are a big pain in the cooter. But when I start skipping periods, I also start getting cranky. Then I crave carbs and sweets so bad I am willing to bake when it's not even the weekend (gasp!). And then, worst of all, I have zero - I mean ZERO - interest in my, um, marital duties. (Thank god for the donuts, or there wouldn't be any point in going on.)

But then things start cranking towards the Red Letter Days, but it's like watching a very old person with a walker cross the street. The only indication I have that things are progressing towards an actual menstrual cycle once again is the return of the Chin Zits. Big chin zits. Zits so deep I can feel them on the back of my head. I have layered on concealer with a trowel and you can still see this thing from across the room with the lights out. And its twin is trying to hatch on the opposite side (I guess it knows how I feel about symmetry). All last year, my periods were regular again, I was only cranky some of the time, I was more interested in my, um, marital duties than I have been MY ENTIRE LIFE (and it was awesome) and I had NO ZITS. Not one.

So, how do I get back to that? Can I go to a doctor and say, "Give me drugs and make me like that again?" Or will they just go, "That's peri-menopause, bitch. Deal with it."? What's a cranky, fat, be-zitted woman with a very patient husband to do?

In Quilting News...

So, last week I had this bright idea about something that I was gonna do that would be so funny, and it involved making a quilt, so I made the quilt in, like, one day (it was very simple), but then realized that I had made it way too big to use the way I wanted to, so I ended up just using it for free motion quilting practice. I have been stippling the living crap out of everything and it's a fairly acceptable way of getting a quilt done, but I know myself, and I am not going to be content with that for long. I need to learn how to control a large quilt in my machine and get some other designs under my belt.

I have a pretty good set-up for my machine, with a table to the left and one behind the actual sewing table:

This gives good support to the quilt and I highly recommend this if you are struggling with your FMQ-ing (and thanks are due, of course to Leah Day, who taught me to do this). I would love, love, love to replace my sewing table with the Gidget table that Leah sells because it comes with special acrylic inserts for where your machine rests, so you have a smooth, flat surface that is even with the table. Even though the needle plate on my machine is even with the table, the bed of the machine itself is curved, creating a lip in the table and the quilt does sometimes get hung up on that. I've learned to work around it, but the flat surface would be nice. Sadly, it's $245, and that means I can either have that or electricity for another month. I'll have to think about it.

I marked off 8.5" squares on the quilt and chose a design from Leah's library called Matrix. I decided I would do every other square in this pattern and then choose another for the ones in between, maybe something loopy or more flowery. Now I think that 8.5 inches is too large an area to work in, and I would go with 5 or 6 inches next time. The effect so far is kind of neat, even though it looks like trolls attacked my quilt with thread when you look at it up close.

I think it might end up being fairly interesting when it's all done, and I may even try something similar again.

I'm glad that with quilting, there's always something to challenge me, always more techniques to learn and farther to progress. Otherwise, I'd just be a cranky, fat, be-zitted, frigid woman with a lot of bad quilts lying around. And that would be awful!

As opposed to an Irregular Blogger, naturally

2012-02-03T14:12:00.000-05:00

So, the real reason for all this furious posting is that I took a gander at my blog archive and noticed that I made fewer posts in 2011 than in the year I started blogging, and I started in July of that year. That's just sad. Of course, I had the excuse that I got sucked into the whole GenQ thing last year, and I am still being sucked....um, occupied...by that project and will be even more over the next few months. But before GenQ started I wanted to revitalize this site and get back to posting with some sort of regularity, and I decided with this new year that I would, no matter what else I happened to have on my plate at the same time. I will probably fail miserably, but what you have seen over the last several days is the beginnings of my attempt to be a Regular Blogger once again.

Having been able to reconfigure the look of the blog so that the posts are wider and I can use larger photographs has helped a lot with my enthusiasm for blogging again. However, I may regret that after what I have to show you today.

My older daughter, Harper, is, like a lot of kids, totally enthusiastic about EVERYTHING...for about five seconds. She will lay at my feet, begging and pleading for her own sewing machine, yet when I let her sew something, she gets tired after about three seams and has to go lie down with some Nutter Butters and an episode of Wizards of Waverly Place to recover. Then I wait three or four months and it all starts again.

Now, as I've mentioned ad nauseam, I have been a bit under the weather recently and this has meant that both girls have not had as much mommy time as they are used to. So, last week, when school was closed for two days due to Stick It To Working Parents Right After Christmas Break Teacher Training Sessions, and Harper dug out one of my graph paper pads and my colored pencils, I knew I probably was not getting out of participating in a Harper Project. This was her design:

The colors didn't scan exactly right, but that is supposed to be purple, pink and orange. Since we would end up working with triangles, Harper "elected" to have me do the actual construction while she acted in a purely supervisory capacity. So I appointed her Head Designer and Secretary of Snacks while I took over as Lead Contractor and Director of Milk Pouring (she still spills sometimes).

We decided to make it a mini quilt and calculated how big it could be if we used fat quarters. Harper chose the fats from my stash and decided on red thread for the quilting. She preferred a meander to any kind of straight line quilting, and chose a lovely teal blue for the binding. Please note that I cannot be held responsible for any seizures or other catastrophic neurological events caused by viewing the following pictures:

"My eyes! My eyes!"

And thus endeth my spate of creativity. I have no projects currently in the works, so if my posting continues, we're going to have to talk about something other than quilting. So next week, it might either be the story of how my college boyfriend took me camping during our sophomore year and almost got us arrested or maybe a video of me demonstrating Shit Quilters Say (suggestions welcome).

A willy nilly post from my twisted little heart

2012-02-01T06:00:00.005-05:00

Yep, another post. I have no idea either. I guess it's all the free time this stupid illness has afforded me, and who knows whether I'll be able to keep it up (odds are: no) but I'm enjoying it while it lasts. Even if I keep having to clean bits of lung tissue off my computer screen.

That damn Flippy Lip quilt, or whatever the hell I'm going to call it, should have been enough to keep me occupied last week, but no, I had to sign up for the GenQ Valentine swap. And I didn't exactly sign up for it. I said that if we ended up with an odd number of participants and we desperately needed one more to be able to match up that last individual with a swap partner then, yes, I would participate, and I got the word that my services would indeed be required just about the same time that I started to get sick.

I saw that my swap partner lived in the same city as one of my my GenQ cohorts, so I asked her (the GenQ cohort) if she was acquainted with her and she was. They are in a guild or mini-group together, and the cohort was kind enough to inform me that this individual was a bit conservative in her tastes and so perhaps I should not send anything festooned with penises. AS IF I WOULD. Geez, just because I have some fun here on my own personal space doesn't mean I just send that shit out to unsuspecting people all willy nilly (heh, heh, heh: "willy"). Give me a little credit for being an actual adult who doesn't go around flipping off cops and flashing little old men because she has no self control. I haven't done either of those things in months.

So for a week I laid in bed and worried about what the hell I was going to make, particularly after losing a week to Marburg 2: Electric Boogaloo. I decided that a mini quilt was my best option, since I don't know bupkiss about making cards and I couldn't imagine what else might be appropriate. If I wanted something heart-y I figured I could either go with applique or paper piecing and since applique can take a while, depending on the complexity, and, knowing me, I'd choose something akin to building a particle accelerator out of novelty fabric, I went with paper piecing.

I hadn't actually done any paper piecing since I made Alexander last year:

But I figured if I did it once, I could do it again. I went to the same place where I got the pattern for Alexander, because I remembered her having some interesting heart designs and I chose her Twisting Spiral Heart pattern. I love getting patterns by email. When I can buy Godiva key lime truffles via email and have them appear in my hand in mere minutes, I will die happy.

I wish I had some great story for you about how hard it was to put this together, but I don't. It was super easy and I really enjoyed making it. God, how fucking boring is that?

Quilting it scared the living daylights out of me and at first I only had the large border areas outside the heart quilted and I was going to leave the rest alone. But it needed the texture throughout the entire background, and even though I cannot control fabric under a needle very well at all, I held my breath and went for it. And it worked! I quilted in some itty bitty spaces and didn't end up lurching over into the areas I was trying to avoid. I'm starting to wonder if Mucinex has brain-focussing side effects they're not telling us about.

AND I have another mini-quilt that I made at Harper's request I hope to show you later this week, if she ever picks out a binding for it. It is her own design and it is totally fabulous, if you think royal purple, bright orange, and hot pink with red thread for quilting is fabulous, and why wouldn't you? I'm praying she goes for lime green for the binding so it can fry every possible neural circuit between my retina and my brain. I don't like to do anything halfway.

It also needs a name. Maybe the P.S.E.T.

2012-01-30T08:44:00.004-05:00

I'm still dying. I won't bore you (much) with the details, but my chest sounds like someone is wadding up a Sun Chips bag every time I breathe and I constantly feel like I can't get quite enough air. Yeah, I've already been scolded by several people that I need to get that shit checked out, like, yesterday, so I will probably be spending today at the doc's, stripping down to my skivvies so she can place an ice cold stethoscope on my chest without undue hindrance from anything that would protect my modesty or keep me, you know, warm.

I discovered long ago that when I am ill or otherwise in pain, sewing is usually the only thing that I can tolerate doing for any length of time. This was not the case while my hand was inflamed or while I was going through the worst of the flu, but right now, even though I feel like a miserable sack of poo (as an old friend of mine used to say), I forget about it while I'm sewing. So I spent most of Saturday finishing up a project that I started several weeks ago and that had been on hold during my bout with la grippe.

Early last summer I started collecting Anna Maria Horner and Joel Dewberry fat quarters. I was aiming for a collection with a particular sort of boho look to it, and these fit what I wanted. I would have added more from other collections if I had found anything that seemed to fit, but by the time I had all of these, I thought I better stop before things got too out of hand.

I had seen several examples of Mock Cathedral Windows online and I had been eager to try it, and I had also been looking for a project that would employ my boho fat quarter collection. I wanted to go for a really super scrappy look, and see if I could make that sort of thing work.

I didn't really see any good way to test the layout ahead of time (translation: I was too lazy to try and come up with a way to test it out ahead of time) so I did what I usually do and just jumped in. I bought an Olfa rotary circle cutter and started whacking.

I cut two circles from each fabric and set aside one pile to be the tops and one pile to be the bottoms (or doms and subs, if I'm feeling kinky). That way, I figured each fabric would make one appearance as the middle of the circles and one as the "petals" (and also the squares on the back. Of course, it helps if you keep track of which pile is which and don't move them all over the sewing room because you get a big ol' bug up your butt to start organizing shit. But, whatever. The original principle was sound and that's all that matters. Execution, shmexecution.

I layered two fabric circles with a batting circle and sewed them together. Turned out that despite my handy, dandy circle cutter, I managed to cut everything all wonky. But wonky is cool, right? It's what all the kids are doing now. So I did what I always do and fudged it and figured it would all work out in the end. Or I'd give it to the kids.

So, then I had a nice pile of fabric frisbees:

Then came the fun of sewing them together. And it was fun. Really. That's not just the Dayquil talking.

The problems came when trying to sew down the petals, or flaps, or lips or whatever the hell you call them. Sometimes everything would go beautifully, and then the next one would bunch up and the quilt would seem to lurch under the needle and I'd end up with something all fucked up and wrinkly. But there was no way in hell I was ripping stitches out of this one. However it tuned out was the way it was gonna stay and if it looked like ass I would just pretend I bought it off some hippie out of the back of her VW van and then I'd make up some story about how I had to air it out for days to get the weed stink out of it and how it may not have worked because I still smell colors every time I get near it. So, you know, win-win either way.

I finished the whole thing Sunday morning and dragged it and my coughing carcass outside to photograph it for posterity.

I can't decide how I feel about it. I like it better now than I did while it was being a little bitch. And everything looks better hanging from my patented Front Porch Quilt Photography Apparatus.

Maybe it needs a cute kid.

David is all freaked out that the back just looks like this and not a reverse image of the front.:

It's also a very small quilt, like baby size, but I am no longer giving away baby quilts since no one seems to actually like them, so this may be a throw or a picnic mat or a Psychotropic Substance Enhancement Tool. Not that I would know anything about that. Anymore.

In the interstice...

2012-01-26T09:51:00.001-05:00

...between the hand thing and the flu, I did manage to work more on my Organize The Sewing Room Project. After the fabric shelves, the next thing to tackle was the closets. See, this house was remodeled before we moved in and the owners decided that instead of having one large and two small bedrooms upstairs, they would combine the two smaller bedrooms into one massive master bedroom. At first, we made that larger space the girls' room, but after I started sewing and realized that the lighting in the basement was going to blind me and possibly drive me to a vitamin D deficiency-induced suicide and that the kids only wanted to hang out wherever I was anyway and not in their own designated area, I decided to make that big room upstairs mine. Because it combined two bedrooms, it has three, count 'em, three closets, two of which I use for my sewing stuff and the other for bins of kid toys and bedding stuff. The sewing closets have just been stuffed with haphazard piles, to the point that if I want to put something in one of them, I just open the door a crack, toss the thing in, slam the door closed, and run.

So, for closet number one, I bought a set of metal shelves and had a grand old time assembling them because it involved a lot of whacking things with a rubber mallet. I had to also purchase a rubber mallet, and now that I have one, I don't know how I ever lived without it. Our house is furnished entirely from Ikea, so we had to assemble every damn thing we own and somehow we did this without a rubber mallet. Then, the weekend right before the flu hit, we bought a table and drawer set for the girls to use for homework and art projects and this time we had the magic mallet and I imagine that is what Orville and Wilbur felt like when the wheels left the ground for the first time.

I had already tricked the kids into helping me organize my scraps into colors a while back, but I also needed to do the same to my fat quarters and once again they were happy to assist. However, I had to re-fold every single fat quarter I own in order to get them into the bins I bought, but somehow this activity did not induce any sort of repetitive stress injury. I also found some flat bins that looked like they'd be good for certain works in progress and UFOs and such, and it was looking pretty good:

Except you see how the second shelf has only 10 bins? And how the top has 4? And how the bins are all different on the bottom shelf? THIS WAS UNACCEPTABLE. Seriously, every time I would look at this, my eye would twitch because of the lack of symmetry. But then I got the flu and I couldn't do anything about it and that was absolutely the worst thing about being bedridden for over a week: the fact that I had an unfinished, asymmetrical organization project and I couldn't futz with it.

And it's not like I'm anal about everything. My house looks like a fucking dive all the time because I have neither the time nor the patience to keep everything neat as a pin, and so I live with a great deal of clutter and chaos. Tissue missed the trash can? At least it's near the trash can. Where should you put that very important piece of paper that we will need in order to have money to eat/send the kids to school/continue to own a properly registered vehicle? Why right on top of that big pile of paper that is leaning precariously close to the stove! Where are your shoes? Well, where were you standing when you last threw them across the room?

But give me a project and I must complete it to my exacting specifications, and until I do so I am obsessed with achieving my desired result. So, once I had the energy to leave the house, I immediately hit Target and scooped up the rest of what I needed.

Oh, thank goodness. That's better. Except, they didn't have any more bins with blue lids so I had to put two with white lids on the middle shelf. And the large bins I got for the bottom won't fit three across so, I have to use the smaller bins for that space, but they don't fill the space quite enough and -

Excuse me. I need to go spend some time on First World Problems and then see if my rubber mallet can do anything about this eye twitch.

UPDATE: Apparently I am not the only person afflicted with this debilitating condition. Kat and I Plead Quilty, this is for you:

What happens when I can't blog for two and a half weeks

2012-01-20T11:24:00.000-05:00

I should know better than to make plans, to attempt to work out a list—even if only a mental one—of goals for the year, because the gods which control such matters clearly have it in for me and have conspired over the years to sabotage all my efforts at self-improvement. Obviously, because despite the demonic exterior I am human, one of those goals is always to lose weight and exercise more. And it's not like I go crazy and do more than I'm capable of and get injured in the process. No, the thing that happens—and there's always a thing that happens and thus the sabotage—rarely has anything to do with the actual exercise I've been performing.

We spent Christmas at my mom and dad's place in Tennessee, as we've discussed, and while we were there there was a lot of talk about What To Do With All The Stuff. See, my parents have accumulated a TON of stuff over the years and then they built this lovely house in the middle of nowhere to hold it all, then bought MORE stuff - and now they have realized that they are not going to be able to take care of a ginormous house forever and so stuff has got to go. Unfortunately, they did not also provide for a way for me and my siblings to house all the stuff, even split three ways, so we have to be circumspect about what we can take.

Now, in one of the umpteen closets in the rooms where we all sleep when we visit (a closet that I have peeked into frequently because I needed to turn the light on inside it to use as a nightlight so I could make it from the bed to the bathroom at midnight without knocking myself out cold on something) there was a box of fabrics, all neatly folded, that were clearly Laurel Burch. And that box had been in that same spot, untouched, FOREVER. Since I had already caught my parents sneaking out to measure our car to see how much of their stuff they could sneak in and get rid of, I figured that this was one of those rare times when asking, "Can I have that?" would not be rude.

When I told my mom about the box, she at first didn't realize there was such a box or that there was any fabric down there. I was pretty sure she was gonna go, "You mean I've got good shit down there? Hell, no you can't have it! I'm hoarding it for a reason!" But instead she said, "You can have it all," and even started pulling out fabric from the shelves right next to her. So I went from hoping for a box of Laurel Burch to agreeing to house my mother's entire stash.

Not that I mind. I was thrilled, frankly, but when I went into that closet, and started exploring I discovered that there was a hell of a lot more there than I had realized.

This doesn't even include what Mom had in her room. I was only able to bring home a fraction of all this (I did snag the Laurel Burch and Kaffe Fassett though, just in case she tried to change her mind) so I lugged all this up to her room and ordered a bunch of flat rate boxes from the post office so she can ship the rest to me a bit at a time.

So we get home and I now have all this new yardage and no place to put it. The last time I rearranged my sewing room, I put all my fabric in an old dresser/changing table that hasn't left the room because it's too big to move and there's nowhere else to put it anyway. It was never a good system, but it kept everything out of sight, which seemed good, because this was the sight:

Not horrible, but not really user friendly. I had some shelves in a corner of the room that I had rejected for use as fabric storage because there was too much space between the shelves and I am not the sort of person that can build my own, so they had been used for books and magazines. But then I found some double cube things at Target and figured out that by not attaching the sides I could make them fit as inserts to my shelves and BOOM! I now had a perfect place for yardage.

Now, in order to make all the yardage fit properly, I had to re-fold it and It needed to be folded consistently. So I took an old acrylic ruler I never use that was about six inches wide and used that to sort of roll the fabric around (I got the method from this tutorial. No it's not dirty - I'm too sick to dickroll you today, sorry). This required a lot of ruler flipping, and apparently, this was too much for me.

I managed in just a couple days of fabric flipping to induce tendonitis in the base joints of my pinky and ring fingers on my right hand (the dominant hand, naturally). And Holy. Crap. it hurt like a motherfucker. And so for days I couldn't type, couldn't sew, couldn't cook. And I sure as shit couldn't fold fabric AND THERE WAS STILL FABRIC TO BE FOLDED.

I get very squirrelly and cranky when I can't do things and that is why this post is merely descriptive and not particularly funny. The tendonitis has, for the most part gone away, though there remains some residual soreness, just to remind me, I suppose, of the Perils of Planning. But no sooner did the tendonitis go away, than the flu arrived.

You know how you get a stuffy nose and a sore throat, maybe a cough, and you feel kind of icky for a day or two and you tell people you have the flu because, well, it's flu season, and you feel crappy so, ergo, its the flu. Yeah, that's not the flu. The flu smacks you so fucking hard that in the midst of it you smack your head and go, "Oh, yeah. THIS is the flu!" Every inch of your body hurts. Scalp. Teeth. Earlobes. The soles of your feet protest as you walk across the floor. Then there's the chills. Oh, Christ, the chills. You get so bone-deep cold, and you start to shiver uncontrollably (and look this symptom up and the advice all says, add an extra blanket or sweater to warm the patient) and all the sweaters and quilts in the house do nothing to help. And often the chills come when you are lying down and you desperately want to get up to go find that extra sweater or blanket, but getting up makes the chills worse so you lie there, freezing and shivering, until the chills finally subside and are replaced by fever and sweating and hoping for death. And through it all you are so tired that even reading is too much of a drag on your limited energy and so all you do is stare into space and hope to sleep.

So once again, I have been unable to do ANYTHING. Once again it seems as though the entire month of January is becoming a complete wash and despite my hopes to rev up this poor old blog and to reorganize my sewing room and get started on all my writing projects that I've put off for so long, I'm just sitting in a pile of used tissues and praying for sweet, sweet death. This is the first time in about six days that I've had the energy to type anything longer than a facebook status, so I suppose that means I'm on the upswing, but it probably also means I'm going to have to spend the rest of the day in bed to recover. I also know that this is one of those situations where many in the world have it worse off than me, and I admit this freely and without hesitation.

But I'm still miserable and I still feel sorry for myself.

So, to end this pathetic post on some kind of up note, I'll share with you something else I found in that closet. The first quilt my mom ever made. This baby is all hand pieced and hand quilted. No, I didn't get to take that, but finding it was like finding gold. I'd love to get it here so I can hang it from my patented Front Porch Quilt Photo Apparatus and get some really good shots of it, because a short husband and an eight-year-old weren't quite cutting it.

I also have a name for my upcoming Chinese buffet restaurant

2012-01-04T10:57:00.001-05:00

We just got back from a week at my parents' place in Tennessee, and are slowly readjusting to life in civilization again. I believe I've told you that my parents live in the middle of Fucking Nowhere, Tennessee, and it takes a half a tank of gas (well, half a tank when you drive a Matchbox car like we do) just to hit the nearest decent-sized town for groceries or other retail needs. Fortunately, their house is like a spa, particularly the showers. I now have established a deep, meaningful relationship with their downstairs shower, and David is fully aware and has given his consent as long as I don't use all the hot water, which apparently isn't possible because the hot water appears to be infinite in that place and thus my affection.

And God bless Tennessee, truly. I do love that place, and there is aways a moment where we cross the border and I know I'm home again. Oh, sure the landscape is the familiar rocky hills I grew up with and the accent is sweet and twangy, but what really makes it feel like home are the billboards. Since we come in from Virginia to the east, we pass close to Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, and if you know anything about those places you'll know that they are the craziest tourist trap towns in the entire southern U.S. and much of the, um, attractions are devoted to, how shall I say, the indigenous culture of the east Tennessee hills. Hillbillies, in other words. Even when I was growing up and we would vacation there every year, back before Dolly opened her Wood and before the place really took off, there was a miniature golf course called Hillbilly Golf (it's still there, but apparently they're too hillbilly for a website). Now they have those big dinner arena things, like Medieval Times, but with feuding lumberjacks. Every other billboard for miles was for Lumberjack Feud. And then there was one for moonshine! Somebody got the bright idea to legally distill and sell corn liquor. IN MASON JARS. And I'm cursing like a—well, like me—as we pass these magnificent roadside advertisements because I can't just whip out my camera and get a picture of them for you. I love it that I get hate mail when I make fun of my redneck brethren, and yet Tennesseeans are exploiting it themselves left and right.

I couldn't fit the pickled pig's feet in the shot. No lie.

But the ones that really get me are the billboards that truly show that Tennessee is God's country. You know, a place where good, decent, church-going folk live and raise families the moral way, never letting their teachers mention the word "gay" in or near a school because all you have to do is hear the word and suddenly all you want to do is find the nearest same-sex individual and go to town on them. Everybody knows that - it's in the Bible. And down there, in the land of the righteous, you can see tons of huge, in-your-face ads for guns and porn. GUNS, GUNS, GUNS—WORLD'S LARGEST SELECTION OF UNNECESSARILY DESTRUCTIVE WEAPONRY. WHY KILL A DEER WHEN YOU CAN ANNIHILATE IT? And then 100 yards later, ADULT WONDERLAND—WORLD'S LARGEST POON AND WANG EMPORIUM.

Oh, and fireworks. I'm not sure how that fits in with the guns and porn, but apparently Tennesseans love fireworks as much as high-powered firearms and girl-on-girl action.

And then I saw the most wondrous thing of all. Not one, but TWO billboards for quilt shops. Now, perhaps in other parts of the country this is a normal thing, but I never thought of any quilt shop as being a big enough business to even afford a gigantic roadside sign, much less be able to benefit much from it. But there they were.

And then it hit me. When I retire, and we move back to the hills of my ancestral home, I will need something to do to keep me busy. And I have the perfect enterprise, one that can't possibly fail to succeed in that environment. And then, as I was fantasizing about this, I realized that in the recent name game we had here for giveaway day, I had the perfect name. So, in about 20 years, you'll all be able to find me in Tennessee. Just look for the billboards.

P.S. Katherine, aka the real Streaker Beaver, email me. I'm sending you the book and calendar.

Winner

2011-12-18T06:00:00.000-05:00

The winner of the Modern Log Cabin book and a copy of the Quilter's Shirtless man and Spicy Burrito Calendar is...Cat, whose porn name is Mandy Lawson. Well, not everyone can be a Streaker Beaver. And here are some of the other names that will eventually be included in my future novel, Quickie Quilters, in which members of a quilt guild make porn to raise money for charity:

Topsy CountryClub
Taffy Rutledge
Cookie Blackknocker
Butterball Bearcreek
Puss Rexford
JoJo Beaverbrook
Tripper Topaz
Pinky Orion
Daphne Penistone
Frisky Romance
Dribble Truman
Hoppy Joplin
Cinnamon Charity
Precious Dixie
Bubbles Phantom
Shannon Panorama
Smoky Chilton
Dusty Mimosa
Bootsie Filbert
DeeDee Decatur
Nikki St. Francis
Sniffy Caledonian

And of course, the president of the guild, who also writes and directs the film is... Big Mama Maple.

Thanks to everybody who commented and didn't faint dead away at the nasty, nasty porn reference. And, Cat, you didn't leave an email, so I'll try to contact you through twitter.

So super nice

2011-12-15T10:16:00.000-05:00

My new humor column is up at GenQ today. It's called My First Quilt, and though it's not necessarily an accurate account of my own personal quilt deflowering, it does kinda describe how I remember feeling at the time.

I hope to have something longer here tomorrow or maybe Monday, but it's about something I'm going to be asking your help with, and it's not necessarily funny, but is about someone else who is, so, you know, gird your loins.

And the best porn name so far? Streaker Beaver.

Welcome. And Beware.

2011-12-12T06:00:00.003-05:00

Hello! If you are here as a participant in Sew Mama Sew's Giveaway Day, then you probably have no idea who the heck I am, and you may not even care. BUT I CARE ABOUT YOU. So, first, I am going to show you what I am giving away:

That would be a copy of Modern Log Cabin Quilting by Susan Beal.

Now, a little bit about me. I am a self-taught quilter who has been blogging about learning to sew and other equally riveting topics since 2008. I am a humorist by profession, so what I do here is often irreverent, unrepeatable, and frankly, downright dirty. I curse with impunity, so if F-bombs and other delights give you the heebie jeebies, I suggest you look elsewhere for your quilty humor. Or you could go read my Unraveled columns over at Generation Q Magazine, where I never curse at all, yet still manage to offend people because everybody knows that quilting isn't the least bit funny.

Over the years I have built up a great following of like-minded readers, who have seen me through a lot of things, including my big brother's diagnosis of brain cancer back in 2010. So great was their support, they even bullied, badgered, and bribed their significant others into posing for a fundraising project for my brother and his family: The Quilter's Shirtless Man and Spicy Burrito Calendar. (You can go here to read more about it and here to peruse all the pages or even, I daresay, buy one). So, because I know that my readers want to have their men displayed in quilters' homes everywhere (who doesn't, really?), I'm going to give away a calendar as well, along with the book.

To win (and yes, all my dear friends who have been with me forever, you should enter too), just leave a comment telling me your porn star name (that would be the name of your childhood pet combined with the name of the street you lived on— mine is Minnie Bluegrass. No lie.) and I'll announce the winner on December 18.

Good luck!

The best I can do today (NSFW)

2011-12-05T09:33:00.000-05:00

And, no. That is not a hickey on my neck. That is what happens when I scratch. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Skinny is the new black hole

2011-11-30T22:08:00.000-05:00

Yes, I know I've become the worst blogger ever. It's just, you know, stuff keeps getting in the way and it's not even exciting or interesting stuff that I could then turn into some wacky post. It's the most mundane, boring shit imaginable so I have a hard time working up the enthusiasm to come over here and go, "God, ya'll. I'm so busy and so bored AT THE SAME TIME. Please pity me. And bring me a snack."

I'm on a goddamn diet again, but this time is not as hard. I have been told by Certain People that if I do not manage to show my face at Market this spring there will be Hell To Pay in the form of...well, I don't know what. Asking my advice on something? But anyway, I am expected to go to this thing and presumably they want me to talk to actual human beings. Face to face. Not even through email or Facebook, like normal people. Which means that tons of people who could potentially be investors or otherwise benefactors of our little endeavor are going to look at me and then look at my big belly and go, "Oh, when are you due?" And then I will have to disembowel them with a plastic spork I stole from the room where press people get snacks and it will be very ugly and messy and some fluids that are rather hard to wash out might splash on David Butler and then every woman within a 1000-foot radius will beat the living shit out of me all in the hopes that he might notice them and leave Amy and run off behind a booth with them to have wild quilter groupie sex and then even MORE people will hate me than ever (yes, there are people in the Q-world who hate me AND THEY WILL BE THERE TOO) and I will have to blog from whatever country I can escape to that doesn't extradite. Unless I lose thirty pounds by then. Skinny solves everything. I saw that on Oprah.

But what really sucks is that I had so many plans for this blog earlier this year, and just plans in general that, if they worked out, I would totally share with you, 'cause, you know, we tight. I really wanted to try to do NaNoWriMo this year, because I have plots for at least three books in my head just screaming to get out (one of which is the Great American Satirical Novel - the other two are just silly fluff, which would have been perfect for NaNoWriMo). And though I did start one of them, I didn't get anywhere close to finishing and certainly didn't write every day. I will say though, that in one section, two of the characters have a drinking-and-talking-about-men tradition that they refer to as "Cocktails and Cock Talk." GOD, I need to get back to writing that.

So, I am going to try harder to keep up here, and I hope you don't mind if it makes absolutely no sense because I'll be writing at night when my brain-power is at a minimum.

Over the long, long Thanksgiving break—during which time my husband, who was apparently a bit depressed about work but couldn't manage to actually TELL me about it, kept his head down over his iPad as much as possible so as not to actually interact with his wife and children (not that I'm bitter)—I did manage to do some sewing. I have somehow produced children who, when I am sitting at the computer, absolutely must have my full attention all the time or must do something on said computer or they will JUST DIE. But these same children, when I am sitting at the sewing machine, will play happily on their own for hours. This is why, when they are home, I get absolutely no writing done, but lots and lots of sewing. So, I finished this:

Made the backing, stippled the living shit out of it, and bound it. All ready for a very sweet baby girl up in NYC who was just born a couple weeks ago.

I've also been playing with my new Quilt Pro software and trying to design blocks and quilts, but it turns out I pretty much suck at that. I keep creating blocks that are next to impossible or require templates (same thing, really). The first one I tried to actually make turned out like this:

Uh, oops. I posted it on Facebook and was promptly informed that setting in a square like that would be SO EASY with partial seams or something, but I had just conquered y-seams (thanks to this fabulous tutorial from That Crazy Quilty Girl) and the thought of trying yet another magic seam trick made my noggin all achy. So then I turned my block into a rectangle and that solved the problem but my seams were awful and I ended up using the block I made to scrub the toilet. Still, it was adventurous and now I know that I should probably not design anything ever, lest I create some sort of fabric singularity by accident and suck the world into a black hole.

It could happen. I saw it on Oprah.

Oh, Thank Cuteness 2: Electric Boogaloo

2011-11-22T08:29:00.000-05:00

We are having a week dedicated to showing off the cuteness in our lives over at GenQ (this is the first post and today's post is mine) and we are hoping other bloggers will participate (scroll to the bottom of the first post to add your link if you want to participate), so naturally I am compelled to add my own blog to the mix.

I don't have much more to add, but I do need to brag a bit. We had Harper's parent-teacher conference this evening, and when David and I walked out of there we were high fiving and doing chest bumps all the way to the car. It's pretty great when your kid's teacher says, "I absolutely adore that child and one day she won't come home because I'm going to just scoop her up and bring her home to live with me." It's even better when she proceeds to tell you that your kid is basically brilliant. She described her as hard-working, conscientious, focused, good-natured, kind, and sweet. She said that every kid in the class has a hard time not talking when they're not supposed to - except Harper. She showed us a new reading comprehension test that the class took, and which she says was new and turned out to be too hard for second grade, because scores on that test went down all over the school system this year. Except Harper aced it.

Now, I know my kid is freaking awesome. I've always known it. But knowing that her teachers are seeing it too just makes my heart swell with pride.

I can only imagine what it will be like when Devon starts school. Have I mentioned that one day, when that child was, like, three and a half, she just picked up a book and read it to me? And just like that, we discovered she could read. She is ambidextrous and will sometimes draw the same picture on two different pieces of paper with each hand at the same time. Or sometimes she'll do mirror writing. Frankly, it's kind of scary what David and I managed to produce in these kids.

I tried to come up with something funny to say today, but I just can't do it. Not that they aren't hilarious, but right now I can't get past my pride in these two.

Askhat. Askhole. Ask Blaster.

2011-11-14T22:10:00.000-05:00

(Please also note there is a new humor piece up at GenQ: My New Fabric Line.)

What the hell has gotten into you people? In the last few weeks my email inbox has been inundated with letters from readers asking my advice about stuff. Did you all get together and say, "Let's all do the one thing that will drive Megan completely off the deep end"? What on earth makes you think I know anything? About anything? I write humor, for Chrissakes; I can barely dress myself. I went to a liberal arts college. I studied ancient Greek and Euclidean geometry. I didn't learn any marketable life skills. Do you remember when my car was apparently dying and I finally took it to the mechanic and the only problem was that I hadn't changed my oil in SEVERAL YEARS? This is who you're dealing with. Why do you think I know anything?

Now if you had been asking things like, "How can I, too, become a marginally successful humor writer, particularly in a very, very small niche such as quilting or perhaps locksmithing?" Or, "I am tired of having friends and an active social life. How can I, too, become a sad and lonely semi-hermit?" THEN I could see why you might come to me to help solve your problems. Not that I could answer those either, but at least I could understand why you would be asking.

Now truly, I am flattered that you would think so highly of me as to ask my advice on topics I know nothing about, but you have to understand I am completely neurotic about doing things right. If someone asks me a question, I get very worked up and sweaty about coming up with just the right answer. Like if I don't, I'll get a B instead of an A and I'll have to have a little talk with my parents about why I'm trying to ruin my chances of getting into law school. I actually lose sleep over it. So when I do answer, I probably come off sounding really cranky because beneath it all there is the subtext, "Why do I have to doooooo thiiiiis? I'm 42. I don't wanna go to law school. I wanna dye my hair purple and get a tattoo."

So, if this is going to be a thing now, then goddammit we're going to have some fun with it. I will start a new monthly feature here called "The Ask Master." You submit your questions about anything at all—car repair, cooking, travel, work, sex, marriage, quilting, the Japanese economy, ANYTHING—and I will reprint your questions here (anonymously of course) and answer them. Will I answer them seriously? TAKE A WILD GUESS. If we have enough fun with it, I may make it into its own website.

Send your questions to theaskmaster@hotmail.com. I look forward to serving you.

Make A Statement

2011-11-08T12:51:00.002-05:00

Note: I sat on this piece for months because I was, frankly, scared of how it would be received. This is NOT intended to make fun of artists, art quilters, or the work of Kathy Nida. This piece is what I imagine those who find the work of artists like Nida offensive think when they imagine what an art quilter does. I have a very low tolerance for those who are immediately and automatically offended by depictions of the human body. I also have a low tolerance for those who dismiss or denigrate art because it makes them uncomfortable, and for those who assume that an artist is just tossing off shocking things to get attention. I suppose the point would have been more easily made had I written this from the perspective of one of those people, but that was not as interesting as trying to do it this way.

I took a risk by posting this. I have probably failed in what I was trying to express. But lately I've been reading another humorist who often has the same problem, and he keeps going anyway, so I guess I will too.

And just so you know, I DO know the difference between the vagina and the vulva. However, for the purposes of this piece, it was better—and, I admit, funnier—to use "vagina." Despite the inaccuracy, in the common vernacular, most people tend to use the term "vagina" as an all-inclusive term for female gentialia, inner and outer. Therefore, to me it made more sense to use "vagina." It was a conscious choice, not a mistake.

Sure, you may be the prince of patchwork and the queen of free-motion quilting, but if you’re starting to feel that unmistakable sense of ennui after finishing your latest quilt then you need to break free from your bias bindings and start experimenting in the world of art quilts! Anybody can whip out a nice soft blankie to snuggle up under, but you can’t be satisfied with mere comfort quilts. No, you need to make a statement, and despite what your mom says, you can indeed make a statement through quilting. Here are some statements you might consider making with your first art quilt:

- I have a vagina and I LOVE IT.
- Homelessness is bad, racism is wrong, and this vagina will help you see that.
- Some women living under oppressive regimes have no vaginas.
- Global warming is killing our environment. Plus: vagina!

Don’t be afraid to dive into the art quilt pool even if you have no formal training. Talent and skill are no barriers to the art world, and as you’ll see, you don’t even need a sewing machine to create stunning pieces that will be the talk of your next guild show. And remember, if someone says your quilt is the most offensive thing they’ve ever seen and you should be ashamed of yourself because, for goodness sakes, there are children here—then you’re doing something right!

Here are just a few ways you can shake up your stitchery and topple the patriarchy through art quilting:

- Found object quilting. Get out of your fabric rut and discover new media by rooting through a trash bin or walking through a condemned building. Greasy take-out containers, flattened soda cans, and used syringes will add lots of color and texture to your quilts and wadded up plastic shopping bags make great vaginas!

- Deconstructive quilting. Show your contempt for the trite and mundane by taking a traditional quilt and thrashing the living daylights out of it. Beat it with large rocks. Spit on it. Tromp on it with muddy hiking boots, then give it to an untrained Labrador puppy. Finally, tie it to the bumper of your car and do some doughnuts in the gravel parking lot of a seedy strip club. And when you hang its shredded carcass on the wall, give it a vibrant and thought-provoking title, such as Check Out This Vibrant and Thought-Provoking Vagina.

- Performance quilting. Who says an art quilt has to be a static piece chained to a wall? Bring new life into your art quilts by becoming a part of the art yourself. Stand on a busy street corner (naked, of course) holding a rotary cutter and an uncooked Cornish game hen as a statement about farm subsidies. Or, hanging upside-down inside an abandoned warehouse (naked), chant the lyrics to “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” in a deep monotone while waving large quilt blocks in semaphore signals. And, for the ladies, the best part of performance art? Built-in vaginas!

However you decide to make your statement, be prepared to suffer your share of ignorance and intolerance. Most people are frightened of art that challenges and stimulates the mind and it is your responsibility as an artist to show them vaginas anyway. Ignore all those naysayers who claim you’re just being shocking in order to get attention. If all you wanted was attention, you’d be quilting penises instead.

Quilter War! Who's with me?

2011-10-20T14:34:00.000-04:00

(Okay, I probably ought to say this again since I think there's a bunch of new readers: I curse. A lot. Don't read this if a potty mouth gives you the vapors. And for the love of all that is good and holy in this world, don't email me and tell me not to. Or I'll be forced to write a column about you.)

Oh, lordy day. Have you guys seen some of the latest kerfuffles in the world of quilty blogs? (I'm not linking to them; it just encourages them. Plus, they might come after me.) It amazes me that with so many quilters out there, so many blogs, so many things and people in general, that there are some who feel it necessary to pick fights and get all uppity and shit over nothing that actually concerns them. Over stuff that they can ignore. Easily. I mean, not to get all deep n' stuff, but have you looked at the world lately? Does the way one person chooses to blog or to spell her name merit all this nonsense? Cheezy crackers, y'all. I get on my blog to RELAX. To open up and have fun and interact with people who share my sense of humor. Not to get into a turf war over how I wind my bobbins.

HOWEVER. I bet these people are getting LOADS of site traffic out of this! I mean, come on. Who doesn't love a good brawl, right? But, you see, to me, these people are really missing out on the real fun. Sure a blogger can say something and get people all het up to defend someone else, but what the quilt blog world is truly missing out on is a real, honest-to-god Quilt Blogger War. Something that goes on and on. That devolves into personal insults and veiled threats. That makes the comments section look like the censored outtakes from a Jerry Springer show.

For example:

You know what I hate? Quilt bloggers who get all Photoshoppy with their quilt pics and do that soft-focus fuzzy thing around the edges. What makes you think I want to see your quilt shots looking like somebody smeared Vaseline all over the lens? Huh? What else do you do with that Vaseline? Like this blogger, Earlene from Cutie Patootie Quilty-poos. I used to love her blog, but now I am NEVER reading it again. She obviously does not care about her readers OR her quilts OR her jumbo jar of Vaseline which she OUGHT to be using for all that BUTTSEX she obviously has with her sister's husband.

And then Earlene would put up a post called "Oh, No You Di-in't"

Oh, you think that just because my baby is a redhead and the only other redhead for MILES around is my brother-in-law, that I was somehow ANALLY IMPREGNATED by him? Haven't you ever heard of RECESSIVE GENES? And ADOPTION? And FALLOPIAN TUBES? You are obviously a sad, sex-deprived old hag and when you stop photographing YOUR quilts with that tired old Polaroid you got in the NINETEEN FIFTIES before everybody on earth was even born and start using an iPhone like the rest of us, maybe people would start reading your blog instead of using it as the first example in their class on HOW TO BLOG LIKE A BIG STUPID WHORE.

That is how you have a blogger war. Anyone wanna have one with me? C'mon! We'll hurl insults at each other over blog posts and see how much site traffic we can get and how many people we can get coming to our defense! It'll be fun!

My Crib

2011-10-18T09:37:00.000-04:00

So over the weekend, just before the 600-pound rock of death settled on my head, I put two quilts that I have finished recently up on my sewing room walls and took a picture. I put the picture on Facebook, because I was feeling quite proud that I finally have a sewing room that looks like a quilter's room:

And everybody on Facebook was all, "That can't be a QUILTER'S room! It's too neat! Where's the dog hair? Where's the piles of scraps? Where's the mound of empty ketchup packets from McDonald's that you open and suck all the ketchup out of without even any french fries because you are hungry and it's midnight and you are too lazy to go down to the kitchen and get a snack like a normal person? Huh? Where's that?" So, in order to maintain my reputation as a Quilting Slattern, I had to promise that I would reveal the REST of my sewing room, not just the part that I keep neat and tidy so that when I am exhausted from writing yet another AWESOME COLUMN for GenQ (I have no shame. None.), I have a place where I can fall down in a swoon without getting ketchup on my pants.

So, here is my desk. WHERE THE AWESOME HAPPENS:

Please note the ice pack for my head, the dirty socks on the floor, and the paper with the tattoo design I am working on next to the computer.

This is the area next to my desk, where the printer resided along with half of the crap my kids leave in my room:

That pile on top of the printer is where I keep all of my important papers. It's crucial to have a good filing system. Also, that little kitty on the chair in the bottom right corner is wearing a white felt dress that I made. It looks like something a prisoner of war would wear AND it took me several tries to figure out how to sew it so that it had armholes and a neck hole and wasn't just an oddly shaped sack.

This is the cutting table:

This is also another area where the kids' stuff has taken over the available space, because where else are you gonna keep a princess castle, a makeup kit, a bag of plastic Easter eggs, and a homemade checkerboard? Please note that the stuffed animal on the ironing board is mine. It is an octopus, because I have some weird thing for invertebrates. Devon labors under the impression that his name is Octie, but I like to think of him as D'Artagnan.

A close-up of the cutting table:

You can see I purchased a set of plastic containers at Ikea, that I hoped would control some of the clutter, but now they seem to be as much a part of the clutter as the shit they contain. This is also a shot of the table in an unusually pristine condition, as there are usually half-drunk Dr. Pepper cans and bowls of potato chip crumbs or unpopped popcorn kernels littering the table as well.

And I have decided to save the best for last:

My crumb collection. Because it is too fucking hard to drag the vacuum all the way up the stairs, and besides, I have to take off the hose thing and jam on one of the attachments and I am usually WAY too tired from writing humor columns to do all that work. You know, I always say that I don't want to get a dog or a cat because now that Devon is FINALLY potty trained, I think I deserve a break from dealing with another creature's poop, but the crumb-cleaning capacity of such a creature might make the poop-handling easier to take.

So hopefully I have now restored my credibility, but I'm pretty sure we are now about to engage in a rousing game of "Oh, Yeah? You Think THAT'S Messy? Well, One Time, I Lost My Youngest Child In The Scrap Bin And We Still Haven't Found Her." So just remember, I spared you all by not showing you pictures of my bathroom. BUT I WILL IF MY HAND IS FORCED, SO HELP ME.

Oh, and, P.S. The migraine is gone today. I feel like dancing. So I think I will.

uuuuuhhhhh

2011-10-17T07:30:00.000-04:00

Massive. Migraine. Can't. Form. Complete. Sentences.

New. Humor. Column. Is up. At GenQ. Click here.

And then? When you're done? Please. Get a hammer. And beat me. To death. With it.

A cool grand

2011-10-13T11:20:00.000-04:00

Well, you did it, you crazy man-loving bunch of quilters, you. You helped me raise $1000 in just one month. eQuilter.com and LadyFingers Sewing Studio are carrying it. Luana Rubin, who owns eQuilter.com, has been a huge supporter of the project and has been encouraging me to send out press releases. "You could be in the Washington Post on on Good Morning America!" Yeah, I could see me on GMA or the Today show, vainly attempting to suck in my gut and angle my head so that it doesn't look like I have twelve chins and trying to engage in witty repartee. And I just know I'd get stuck with Ann Curry. I have issues with Ann Curry. Deep, abiding issues. She once did a special on George Clooney in Darfur - and y'all know how I feel about the G-man - and I could not watch it. Could. Not. The woman looks cracked out all the time and her questions are all vague and touchy-feely and she always has bad hair.

I would totally write a press release if I knew what to say and who to send it to. And if I didn't have fears that someone might want to take my picture. Being in a position where I might actually get looked at by another human being keeps me from doing lots of things. Like leaving the house. I like my sewing room. It has a bathroom and a bed and a TV and I keep snacks hidden behind the printer. If it wasn't for the kids I would never leave.

And yet. You know, ever since I did that piece for GenQ on quilty tattoos, I have been obsessed with getting one. And not only would I have to leave the house, I'd have to let some stranger - quite possibly a guy - look at me up close. And I'm pretty sure there would be no way to hide my chins. Not that I would get a tattoo on my chins. I'm just saying THEY CAN'T BE IGNORED. Anyway, I really want something on my arm, like a bracelet, and I've been looking up Art Nouveau motifs because I think I would want something kind of Aubrey Beardsley-ish. But I also kinda want my logo too.

I think the tattoo obsession has less to do with wanting a tattoo and more with the way my brain works when I get in a funk. I have just been so blah and unmotivated and feeling unfunny and lonely, and when I get that way I tend to get obsessive about something, like getting that one thing will somehow make it all better. Maybe when the Joel Dewberry fat quarters I cannot afford but ordered anyway arrive, those will make me feel better and I won't get the tattoo.

Nah. I'm probably still getting inked.

So, ages ago it seems. I got George Jr. back from the longarmer and I slapped a binding on that baby. I also sewed on a hanging sleeve, but the quilt is so damn big, I have no good place to hang it except my stairwell, and I can't reach the spot on the wall where I'd have to drive in the nail without some sort of pulley and harness system. But I could hang it temporarily from the front porch on the one day we've had sunshine here the last month:

Hard to be sad when looking at that, yet somehow, I manage.

The P.T.B. Quilt in Pictures

2011-09-29T10:32:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, the quilt I made for the reader who gave me a plane ticket so I could go see my brother just after his brain surgery last year was delivered to its forever home.

From The Bitchy Stitcher

Do you see what I mean about Lisa's quilting transforming it into something beyond just a mere quilt? She made it special, which is exactly what it needed to be for my PTB. (sadly the sun would NOT come out all weekend while I was trying to photograph it, and I just couldn't get the exposure right - thus the dark pics) (Okay I just photoshopped the exposure - maybe that's better).

It feels very, very good to close this particular circle. And even better knowing that I have people like Lisa and the PTB (and you, sweet goodness yes, all of you) on this journey with me.

I will get back to being funny at some point, really. But right now, I just feel like hugging everyone I see. Except that guy at the grocery store who called me "Sir." Him I want to kick in the nuts.

Thank you

2011-09-26T09:40:00.000-04:00

Today I interview myself about the calendar on Generation Q Magazine. As I would expect of me, I manage to insult myself, then storm off in a huff, then return when lured by Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. There's very little that I wouldn't do if Reese's cups are involved.

Soon I will have actual quilty stuff for you to look at as my Plane Ticket Benefactor's quilt is FINALLY finished (but you can't see it until she gets it) and I am binding George Jr. as we speak. That's right. I am typing and sewing AT THE SAME TIME.

So far the calendar has raised $740 in the first week of its release. That is is incredible, since my goal—and I assumed it was a long shot—was to raise $1000 by Christmas. And I know that is because of all of you who were so excited about the project, who gave me advice and encouragement, and who bribed your men into posing for it. I've been saying this a lot and in a number of different places, but it bears repeating: thank you. We made my brother laugh—which is what I really hoped to accomplish—and I have had an insane amount of fun. That would have made the whole project worth it, even if we hadn't raised a dime.

So again, thank you. From the bottom of my heart. Thank you.