Posts from — March 2009

This last family vacation has convinced me that I don’t need to live in San Francisco.  Perhaps it was the stomach bug my husband, daughter and I enjoyed during our trip.  Or the constant drumming and bad music every night on the corner outside our hotel.  Or maybe it was because everyone seems so nice and non-confrontational.

I didn’t even feel heartsick leaving Marin, where we walked around in the sweet air looking at cool sculptures and installations like this one by brother-in-law Phil:

Or this one, which was whimsical and ethereal:

There are times we wish we could leave New York for Kate–who is so beautiful and pure at almost-five and who surely needs more of a connection to the natural world–but then we always come back to the same thought.  How can we possibly be good parents if we’re bored and depressed living in the middle of nowhere (San Francisco excepted).

But there are times we see Kate light up, like when she sees a really big tree or buries her little feet in the sand, and we wonder what we’re doing here.

Tommy needs a new quilt.

And Diane at Bee Square Fabrics is having a contest.  So we made a Grickle Grass and Truffula Trees dolly quilt to celebrate the birthday of Dr. Seuss.

Here’s a close-up of a hand-embroidered Truffula Tree…

We are vegetables.  Three of us, stuck inside, all with sniffles.  But somehow I found the energy to make this little skirt for Kate, who may be the most well-skirted kid in lower Manhattan.  (The fabric was her pick….)

I knew I was in trouble when I saw this fabric on the Bee Square Fabrics website:

I hadn’t sewn for at least 10 years, and I needed a new hobby like a hole in the head. So Diane and I agreed on a barter. It was simple–she would make my little girl Kate a fab twirly skirt with the nesting dolls fabric, and I would knit her husband a 70’s ski cap. It sounded like a perfect solution.

Within a week, possibly two, I realized I was in trouble. Somehow I persuaded my husband to buy not one, but two new sewing machines–a Babylock Imagine serger and a Janome Memory Craft 6500. The addiction was subtle and insidious. I found myself sewing nonstop, creating cute skirt after cute skirt, playing with fabric tirelessly throughout the day, forgetting to eat, not sleeping, shirking my responsibilities around the house…. Just three weeks and some 35 skirts later, I felt I had explored “the skirt” thoroughly and longed for another project.

I remember Diane quietly smirking when I announced to her one day that I would never make a quilt. But after sewing sweet little outfits ad nauseum, a bigger project like a quilt seemed the next logical step.

I began trolling websites for fabrics and designs, looking longingly at windows of fabric shops, emailing and talking to Diane about possibilities. I discovered a pattern that floored me, and things began to hum. I knew the quilt would be created with my four-year-old design consultant and most critical admirer, and I knew the color palette would be shades of robin’s egg blue (her walls), brown (her rug), and red (our mutually agreed-on favorite color). It began with two fabrics found on Diane’s website. Both were tiny prints in a muted red, “Daisies” and “Multi Dots,” just perfect for Kate’s quilt.

One thing I found while shopping online, is that searching by color proved to be enormously helpful in choosing fabrics and planning the quilt. “Pretty Polka Dots” (love, love, love this one) and “Polkadot Buds” followed in blue, along with “Swirl Flowers” and “Folk Stripe“. I completed the palette with a quick visit to a local fabric store on the way to school. The hardest thing was keeping the color palette tight and avoiding seduction by other, equally gorgeous choices.

Since I am a bit like a pit bull once I latch onto an idea, I had to cut the pieces out IMMEDIATELY and begin the project. Here’s where Kate offered her expertise. We took turns designing rows of the quilt, throwing them down on the floor in patterns that excited us. Kate co-piloted the Janome, sitting on my lap while we stitched row after row together. It was a beautiful week and felt very much like a strange journey. Surprisingly, I felt a bit sad at its quick completion. Well, sad and very satisfied and peaceful at the same time. I didn’t expect to feel so happy machine quilting and never expected to love the end result so much.

Once the quilt top was done, however, there was another thing to think about and research–the actual quilting. Without too much trouble, I found a long arm quilter in Maine whose website was thorough and professional. We bid the quilt and its batting a fond farewell and mailed it off last week.

When our lovely little quilt returns from its encounter with the long arm, I’ll share pictures with you. In the meantime, I continue to craft. Current projects include the second of a pair of heathery green alpaca socks, a fabric tote bag and a doll quilt a-la Dr. Seuss for the Bee Square Fabrics doll quilt competition.

[Note: this was first posted on the Bee Square Fabrics blog]