Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Finishing Update

Well, here we are, almost out of July. You know what that means, of course? It means that summer is MORE THAN HALF OVER!  Wahooooo!

I have never been a fan of the middle third of the year. In the pre-self-tanning-lotion years of my teens when my friends were spending long afternoons slathered with baby oil and lying on a beach towel until they were broiled the exact perfect shade of crunchy sexiness (at age 15, which, ick), I could manage about 30 seconds in the sun before I was convinced bugs were crawling on me, and the sun was burning my corneas through my eyelids, plus this is boring and I hate it. So all my life, summer and winter, my natural skin color has remained the delicate shade of a goldfish's belly just before it is flushed.

But I digress. My point was that the year is half over so it's time to check in with the word of the year, which I'm sure you remember is finish. (You did not remember? Huh.) I've added several things to my finished list this year, and it is amazing how exhilarating it is to move an item from in-progress to DONE.

I present for your amazement Boy#1's T-shirt quilt, which my goal had been to get done by his mid-June birthday.

In 2012.

Yes. I have had that garbage sack of T-shirts from his youth and childhood around for quite literally years and years. There are shirts from his high school years, and I believe one was even older than that (I don't remember exactly when he began to work as an umpire for rec league T-ball games). But after I finished Boy #2's quilt--the sloppiest, sorriest piece of stitchery ever produced--I got to work on this one. I cut out the squares, then these squares sat in a heap in the sewing room while the earth circled the sun several times.

This spring, I was determined to make this quilt a finish. I simplified the sewing process, queued up Midsomer Murders on Netflix, and sat down at the sewing machine. Last week I stuffed the finished quilt in a used gift bag and handed it to One during our 24 Hours of Togetherness. Three years overdue, the quilt was done.

It isn't a work of art--a county fair judge would probably refuse to give this even a green participation ribbon. But it will be nice and warm on fall evenings on the screened porch of Boy#1 and Lovely Girl's new-to-them house.

And, coincidentally, at the same time I got done with the quilt I finished the final season of Midsomer Murders that Neflix offers. That's 15 seasons of quaint British sleuthery and one quilt finished and the year is only half over. That feels astonishingly productive, but perhaps I have a different scale of production than most people.

How is your finishing coming along?


6 comments:

  1. I am CRAZY about that quilt. My kids wear a lot of fun t-shirts, and I hate to see them just GONE when they're outgrown.

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    1. Swistle, this is crazy easy. It's fleece-backed so all the edges can be raw.

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  2. We're about five episodes away from finishing Midsomer Murders on Netflix. Is it strange that I'm freaking out?

    Also: Did you ever notice that strange cawing, shrieking sound that is so often in the background noises of the outdoor shots on MM? It tortured me for months, and I thought it must be some weird British bird and that all Brits totally recognized it, but I finally googled it, and it's the cry of the red fox... but if you have no idea what I'm talking about, never mind! Carry on! Nothing to see here!

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    1. Yes! I'm actually going through some MM withdrawal--I find myself thinking "I can't wait to work on the afghan and watch...NOOOOOOOOO!!!" My only consolation is that there are more seasons out there, and some day Netflix will get their hands on them. Unlike "The Crimson Field." Sigh. And I know exactly what you're talking about with that fox. In my mind I had called it the Bird of Doom because it always seemed to appear when something especially nasty was going to happen. When one of the characters said "Did you hear that fox?" I had to back up and have a "Wait...what?" moment.

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  3. That quilt is a very cool idea. My daughter has some t-shirts I've saved, not really knowing what to do with them, but not wanting to throw them out. I see some cutting in my future --and who knows, maybe even some sewing?

    I too have watched all the Midsomer Murders. I almost felt traitorous, however, because I actually like the new Barnaby better than the old. There is something so enjoyable about his very dry humor :-)

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  4. What kind of fabric did you use for the border around the squares?

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