Delicious fabrics, why you take so long to cut? Why you hate me?
(Untitled Fantasy Novel is winning, though it’s a close thing. The dirty dishes are the real loser here.)
I’m at 22,241 words of a novel I never thought I could write. I am behind the NanoWriMo curve (I should probably be around 26,600 words by now) but I’m assuming it will all work itself out. All these characters I used to hang out with when my ninja princess was a wee baby are dropping by. I’m enjoying getting to know them.
I’m also discovering that sewing is apparently faster than knitting.
In my extremely limited experience, the slow part of sewing is the setup — washing fabric, cutting pieces, re-cutting pieces, re-cutting the GD pieces again, going out for a well-deserved margarita, etc.
As long as straight sewing is in your future — and straight sewing will be in my future for a long time — once that is done, it’s just you and the satisfying whir of your cheap Singer, making new fabric from old.
With knitting, the conscientious knitter has a lot of swatching and swatch blocking and stuff, but I am not a conscientious knitter, so I can usually get down to the nitty gritty (okay, I hate puns, but Knitty Gritty) pretty quickly. That’s part of the reason I tend to knit with the same couple of yarns: no swatching.
Knitting is better than sewing for many things, at least for me, at least for now. Going out to buy fabric for a scarf or hat seems silly when I could make one of those in a day or two with yarn I already have (too much of.) I am more likely to knit a sweater than I am to sew clothes for myself, for now, since I know how to knit a sweater and the idea of placing all those little pattern pieces makes me queasy.
Also sewing socks is theoretically possible but looks like something you do on your lunch break when you work at a bananas factory (what does that MEAN?).
But for large, flat bedcoverings, it seems sewing is winning.
I have been obsessed with the idea of learning to quilt. It all started, of course, with Mason Dixon Knitting (go read their blog right now, I dare you not to giggle), and their quilt-inspired blankets. I’ve been knitting their Log Cabin Quilt, off and on, for months. It is slow going, but it is my comfort knitting, and when it’s done it will be a (70th?) birthday present for myself.
From there, I got into the Quilts of Gee’s Bend, and I remembered another elderly woman from the south, my grandfather’s Aunt Alberta, who sewed me a quilt when I was ten, just because I wrote her a letter in pink ink saying I missed her. I wanted to join that tradition.
So I bought some books and fabric and got started on a project for my daughter’s birthday (it’s in three weeks, y’all).
It is faster than knitting. Observe.
Exhibit A: My Log Cabin Quilt
I began this quilt in Colorado the first week of August. That was three months ago. It is around 26″ square right now, unstretched. Almost baby-blanket sized.
Exhibit B: My First Quilt
I do not know why he is obsessed with rulers. Apparently they make great trains. If only he had three train sets.
I did this yesterday. Yesterday. In less than an hour. I did spend Saturday night cussing and cutting pieces, but the pieces are all cut now, and it’s already 32″ square. I should actually have the quilt top done by this weekend, and then I will have time to either dither over whether or not to turn it into a duvet cover since I have never quilted anything, or get a quarter of the way through the quilting process before her birthday and then burst into tears.
In the meantime, I can’t use the sewing machine in the car (while parked! while parked! also at red lights) or on my lap while watching reruns of I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant (apparently 85% of pregnant women have their babies on the toilet or in deserted campgrounds). So there’s that.
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