I have waxed poetic more than once on my personal Facebook page about how joyous it is for me to be the only person in my family who can ever find anything. Anywhere. Ever. The response has always been overwhelmingly in favor of all women everywhere feeling the exact same way. And yet I keep giving my family members chances to redeem themselves, always with the hope that they will this time triumph over the Black Hole of Things Visible Only to Women.
It was in this spirit of hope that last Friday I called my husband from our lake cottage, where I had taken the children earlier in the week to spend some time with their grandparents and cousins. I had also taken my sewing machine so I could work on a project for my friend Barbara Chojnacki's upcoming book, a project I had totally forgotten I had signed on to do and which was now unstarted with a few days to the deadline. I blame my computer meltdowns for everything I can, and this oversight is no exception. But I was not going to let Barbara down, especially as she did an adorable sample for my "Once Upon a Time" book, so while the kiddos built fairy houses and played street hockey and in between my own gin and tonics, I got the entire top pieced the first day. I had not packed batting, backing, or spray baste with me as I never imagined I could be so productive, but now I needed my husband to bring them that night so I could move on to the quilting process. Dare I ask him to find these items in my admittedly not overly organized sewing studio? Oh, I dared.
The following is an approximation of the message I left on the answering machine for him:
"Hey Lover, it's me. For whatever reason the girls are allowing me to sew up here. I may move here permanently. Anyway, I got the top of Barb's project done and I want to quilt it but I don't have batting or backing. So here's the deal. Go downstairs and look on my cutting table. There is a stack of batik fabrics sitting directly in the middle of it. They look a little like tie dyes, but they are called batiks. Quilting lesson for the day. Lots of different colors bleeding together on one fabric, really cool looking. It's a stack of about 15 or so fabrics. Grab me a few of the larger dark pieces, please, so I can use one for the back. Then go to the box on the shelf underneath the table and grab me a piece of batting that will fit a quilt about 24" x 24". Awesome. The last thing I need is a can of the 505 spray baste - that should be in the cabinet by the computer, on the top shelf. The can is yellow with a blue top and says "505" on it. Bring all that and it will make my day complete. You are awesome. See you soon."
As we women know, you really can't be too specific, and I figured that would work.
The following is a photo of the stack of batiks, which as of this morning was still sitting on my cutting table.
Witness the neat stack! Witness the multi-coloredness that almost looks like tie dye! If the photo were bigger, you could witness how the stack was dead center in the middle of the cutting table!Witness what my husband brought instead.
Yes, that's right. A jumbled mess of random pink fabrics that were sitting off to the right after a recent project was completed. I can totally see the resemblance to what I asked for.We won't even go into the batting. Suffice it to say at least he went with the "more is more" rule. I could have quilted fifteen 24" x 24" quilts.
The spray baste, however, he got right. I truly was expecting a can of hairspray by the time I got to that item, but he redeemed himself. Lucky to be cute, is all I can say. And luckily there was a big chunk of hot pink batik in the jumbled mess that I could use for a back, so the day was not totally lost.
I can't show my entire project that I was working on, and have now completed, for Barbara's book, but I will show you this little snippet. It combines my batiks with my newest toy, my Kanzashi flower maker. Way too much fun and the quickest way to make a 3-D embellishment ever.
I really loved being able to use not only the flower maker, but all the batiks I have collected for years and never done a thing with. Barbara's ideas for putting shapes together are really fun, and I hope she likes my attempt.
Pack carefully for your summer sewing, hotties. Our husbands are cute, but I venture to guess that few of them possess the object location gene.
1 comment:
It's the same genetic mutation that makes a man track you down to ask if he has any clean socks without bothering to look in his sock drawer first. :0)
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