The Monogram Project

One evening last week, the new neighbors' kids were over at our house and the eldest, a girl who is turning 9 soon, eventually decided to hang out with me rather than the other kids. At some point, the answer to one of her many, many questions contained the words "sewing room" and she wanted to know what kinds of things I sew. So I showed her a couple quilts, and she was duly impressed. That's why I love making quilts for kids - they think its so awesome that you can do something like that and haven't quite yet developed the "so you didn't have enough money to buy one at the store" mentality that older kids and many grown-ups have. I also showed her a purse I had made and that's when her face really lit up. "Wow! I could sure use something like that,"she said. "I have a wallet but I don't have a purse and my mom always has to carry it in hers." Knowing that her birthday was coming up in just over a week, I asked what her favorite colors were, and she said blue, green, and orange. And was very emphatic about the orange.

I scoured the internet and tapped into the Facebook hive mind, and finally ended up buying this pattern. I used fusible fleece instead of interfacing and used solid fabric instead of jelly roll strips. I actually had an orange fabric with green and blue stripes in my stash and paired it with an old Erin McMorris fabric I bought a couple years ago.

But now that I've made it, I'm wondering if she's allowed to have a purse. She's always telling me what her mom won't allow her to do, and of course they are all things I totally let my kids do. I will leave it to your imagination as to what those things actually are.

So, I might get in trouble, but I've decided I don't care. That seems to be my general attitude these days. I might get in trouble, but I don't care.

I've been thinking about the new year coming up, and I will be glad when this one is over. There have been some good things about it, certainly, but 2010 will forever be the year my brother got brain cancer. And, as I say, good things have come even from that, but even so, I am anxious to leave 2010 behind me.

I started thinking about all the quilting projects I would like to do in the next year, and many of those will be given away. I've also been thinking about wall hangings and about pushing my nascent applique skills further in 2011. I've been focussing on hand applique but I also want to learn to do it by machine, and while I was thinking about this, I just decided - out of nowhere, really - to take a couple of the fabrics from my Christmas quilt and make a big M. Like a monogram. Then it occurred to me that this would be a neat ongoing project throughout the year, or maybe even longer.

So I have decided that for every project I complete, I will take some of the leftover fabric and create an M applique, each with a different font. I may quilt and bind each piece separately, or I may even frame them. Or perhaps they will end up in one quilted piece to be hung on the wall. Whatever the final product, I think it will be a neat way to commemorate all my projects and keep a piece of them with me.

Now I just have to figure out what the hell I'm doing.