The week of endings

I Spy quilt finished. Pleated border. Buttons. 384 appliqued "I Spy" squares.

And then the I Spy quilt. It is finished! For many of you who see me out and about, you know that I have been plugging away on this baby for the past two years or so. I had a little Le Kit box that was from my childhood which I carted around in my diaper bag. At every spare moment, I would sew on a couple of little squares. At the drop-in centre. At the pool. At the playground. I was trying to bring in applique like the knitters brought in knitting.

For the backing, I used an old sarong I got from Nelson, BC back when I was in high school. It was the sarong I was wearing when I met my husband, although I haven't worn it in a long time and I don't plan to again.


My Non-Quilt Related Observations--Making It Work

Detail of "I Spy" quilt. 2012

I am often asked how we can afford to have four children with only one income. In the first place, my husband is a skilled professional who is an excellent provider and husband. (This is why I married him!) That being said, there are many people in his place of employment where BOTH parents are skilled professionals. I sometimes think that I could be a skilled professional if I had someone to watch all my kids, but this isn't the life we are choosing.

My life works well because I use two "exciting" economizing strategies: "making it work" and "waiting it out." Making it work means using things I already have to do tasks that often require other tools. This works for cookware (using a wine bottle for a rolling pin or envelopes for a funnel) to kids toys (yogurt container sandcastles, anyone?) to quilting (sarongs can be a backing!).

The point is, if you have something that works okay, just use it. Marketers and stores are trying to tell you that you NEED a quesadilla maker. (I will admit that I currently have two waffle makers though.) Also, I fight the urge to get all the attachments to any product that I use. I don't need the pasta maker that goes onto my mixer. I just don't. I look at a need I think I have and then spend my time trying to find another way to fill it. D doesn't have any shorts, but he does have a pair of holey sweat pants.
holey sweat pant + scissors = shorts

My second strategy is waiting it out. I use this primarily in our housing, but also in many other things. I might think I need a bigger house, but I'm planning on waiting until I feel I NEED a bigger house and then I plan on waiting another year. I try to do the same for everything else as well. When I feel I need a new t-shirt, I start by doing laundry. Then eventually I realize that I only have one shirt that doesn't have oil stains on it before I go out and find more. (This oil stains are getting more common since we started an exciting future with "Deep Fried Sundays." Good for the tastebuds, but not for the waistline.)

These could both be summarized by "buying less" but I believe that people generally know that to live more economically, they need to buy less. (Or maybe they think they can just buy cheaper although I don't subscribe to this.)

I Spy progress

I Spy quilt with pleated borders and buttons

 We are really progressing. I have stalled out a tiny bit because I am working on my Lone Star quilt which I am also almost finished.

Am I just procrastinating because I don't actually really want to be finished? Maybe. But also, what am I going to do once I am finished these two big projects?

More buttons on the I Spy quilt

I'm sure I will find something. I did get some interesting books out of the library. Anyone heard of Furoshiki?

And I do have about 30 dress shirts that are in a box downstairs waiting for me.

Or maybe I'll play with my kids more. I can't hide behind unfinished quilts all of the time!





PS My number one comment about this blog thus far has been about the "pre-cut dental floss." I admit, I thought this was very funny. Unfortunately, I am not the funniest member of my household and it was my darling husband who, regarding a new great idea I had for economizing from my favourite book*, said, "I hope you don't read something about cutting my dental floss."

How crazy is that? So I asked him how crazy he thought I was. The short answer: very.

He elaborated: "I wouldn't be surprised that after some type of analysis, you would have us all wearing black garbage bags with holes cut for the head and arms."

I questioned this: "Aren't plastic garbage bags very unenvironmental?"

Then he used my greatest asset against me: my inability to take anything on feel ("Kraft Dinner doesn't feel expensive") and instead get out the calculator and crunch the numbers**  ("Kraft Dinner is ridiculously expensive compared to homemade macaroni! We are never buying it again!"***).

Him: "You'll factor in the resources used in black plastic bags compared to the pollutants created per article of clothing from harvesting the cotton, to sewing it in a factory, shipping it to Canada, and driving it to the store... You are just too rational."

*The Complete Tightwad's Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn
**In the past week, I have have calculated:
1. How much my iron costs to run (4 cents per hour on cotton with high steam)
2. How much it costs to make a pot of coffee at home with a paper filter (2.5 cents/filter, 3.5 cents/coffee grounds, water and electricity are negligible)
3. The return on keeping $1500 in our chequing account so they don't charge us fees ($72/year equals 4.8%--much better than putting this money into savings)
4. How much money we have spent on Cadbury Cream Eggs since Easter (much too much, but I won't go into those details)
***He told me that we could have it for "special occasions." I took this to mean our 9th anniversary coming up this summer. Romantic. If you would like to come, tell us ahead of time and we'll splurge and get two boxes!

I Can Wait

People say it all the time, mostly without thinking.

"I can't wait."

I probably say it. My main source of feedback right now is a four-year-old who repeats things like, "Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness." Which is something I must be saying. (She also says it with an inflection that I find really funny, which I now realize means that I am laughing at myself.)

I-spy quilt April 2012 These squares are all hand appliqued. All 384 of them.

In life, there are things that we look forward to. But can we really not wait? Can't we enjoy the process?

I must admit that I have been working on my I-spy quilt for a long time now. Finally, it is starting to come to the end. But I can still wait for it to be finished. It will be finished... I just need to keep plodding along with it. And I don't want to start rushing now because I am (relatively) close to finishing it.

I've heard it a hundred times, but a person who writes a page a day will have a book at the end of one year. Like many resolutions, few people will ever go to the trouble of writing a page a day. I just need to remember to keep working.

But I must say this is really starting to shape up.

Pleats, please

G and Nana's quilt 2012

I have been puttering through my I-spy quilt for probably two years now.

I started it because my Nana made my daughter G a quilt that was I-spy and I had never seen anything so lovely. What an exciting idea! But because I don't have a lot of time to sit in front of a sewing machine, effectively staring at a wall in the basement while my children run crazy upstairs, I decided to hand applique all these tiny little squares onto a white background.

I-spy quilt with polka dot pleats

I started by just doing a mishmash of colour, finished one block like that and realized that I wasn't going to be happy with the results. You see, I don't think I have the best eye for colour.

More pleats for the quilt

Pink pleats for quilting

I imagine that this quilt could look absolutely awesome in a mishmash way, but I didn't have all the pieces picked out before I started and I wasn't confident enough that I would like it. So I went with monochromatic blocks. And because I really can't make decisions, I did it in a colour wash (from light to dark).

Now that I have finished the centre panel (24 blocks each with 16 little squares) and sewn them all together, I have the issue of borders. I feel that someone with a good "feel" for colour would be able to pick a single unifying colour that could bind the whole piece. I don't have the confidence to do that, and at this point, I'm feeling timid.

I did play around with the idea of doing white around the border, like I did in the citrus quilt, but white stains easily. And I wanted something a bit fancier and so I resolved to do pleats on polka dots.

Now each row will be bordered by a pleated block of the same colour. I might be handicapped in my ability to work colour, but I can figure out ways to get around it... What do you think?