A willy nilly post from my twisted little heart

Yep, another post. I have no idea either. I guess it's all the free time this stupid illness has afforded me, and who knows whether I'll be able to keep it up (odds are: no) but I'm enjoying it while it lasts. Even if I keep having to clean bits of lung tissue off my computer screen.

That damn Flippy Lip quilt, or whatever the hell I'm going to call it, should have been enough to keep me occupied last week, but no, I had to sign up for the GenQ Valentine swap. And I didn't exactly sign up for it. I said that if we ended up with an odd number of participants and we desperately needed one more to be able to match up that last individual with a swap partner then, yes, I would participate, and I got the word that my services would indeed be required just about the same time that I started to get sick.

I saw that my swap partner lived in the same city as one of my my GenQ cohorts, so I asked her (the GenQ cohort) if she was acquainted with her and she was. They are in a guild or mini-group together, and the cohort was kind enough to inform me that this individual was a bit conservative in her tastes and so perhaps I should not send anything festooned with penises. AS IF I WOULD. Geez, just because I have some fun here on my own personal space doesn't mean I just send that shit out to unsuspecting people all willy nilly (heh, heh, heh: "willy"). Give me a little credit for being an actual adult who doesn't go around flipping off cops and flashing little old men because she has no self control. I haven't done either of those things in months.

So for a week I laid in bed and worried about what the hell I was going to make, particularly after losing a week to Marburg 2: Electric Boogaloo. I decided that a mini quilt was my best option, since I don't know bupkiss about making cards and I couldn't imagine what else might be appropriate. If I wanted something heart-y I figured I could either go with applique or paper piecing and since applique can take a while, depending on the complexity, and, knowing me, I'd choose something akin to building a particle accelerator out of novelty fabric, I went with paper piecing.

I hadn't actually done any paper piecing since I made Alexander last year:

But I figured if I did it once, I could do it again. I went to the same place where I got the pattern for Alexander, because I remembered her having some interesting heart designs and I chose her Twisting Spiral Heart pattern. I love getting patterns by email. When I can buy Godiva key lime truffles via email and have them appear in my hand in mere minutes, I will die happy.

I wish I had some great story for you about how hard it was to put this together, but I don't. It was super easy and I really enjoyed making it. God, how fucking boring is that?

Quilting it scared the living daylights out of me and at first I only had the large border areas outside the heart quilted and I was going to leave the rest alone. But it needed the texture throughout the entire background, and even though I cannot control fabric under a needle very well at all, I held my breath and went for it. And it worked! I quilted in some itty bitty spaces and didn't end up lurching over into the areas I was trying to avoid. I'm starting to wonder if Mucinex has brain-focussing side effects they're not telling us about.

AND I have another mini-quilt that I made at Harper's request I hope to show you later this week, if she ever picks out a binding for it. It is her own design and it is totally fabulous, if you think royal purple, bright orange, and hot pink with red thread for quilting is fabulous, and why wouldn't you? I'm praying she goes for lime green for the binding so it can fry every possible neural circuit between my retina and my brain. I don't like to do anything halfway.