Let me tell you the sort of thing that you could appropriately do all day when there's a dangerous pandemic and your state is on fire.
Say you have a quilt top. You've pieced it together, you've ordered the backing material online from China because you can't go to a fabric store anymore in case it's sneezy in there, you've got your batting, and you're all ready to make a fabric sandwich. You have a decent-size table you can lay your backing fabric on. It's not quite as big as your quilt, so it hangs off the sides. You carefully smooth out your fabric, you carefully smooth out your batting on top of it, and then you ever so carefully settle your quilt top over the whole schmear and prepare to safety-pin it together so you can stitch it down.
That's one safety pin every four inches, radiating out from the center, smoothing all the while. Stab pin through to the table, laboriously wriggle pin back up, coax pin closed with a fingernail, repeat.
Four episodes of a Netflix series later, you have pinned everything you can reach and you've carefully tugged it to one side to get the parts that were hanging over. Then the other side. Then the third side. Then
When you come to, and when whoever was screaming has let up, you realize that the backing material is about an inch shy of being enough on the fourth side. Not because there wasn't enough material. Because your Depression-era parents have inflicted a legacy of thrift on you and you were trying not to waste the extra fabric.
It's not so bad, really. All that is required is to undo all the safety pins, poink poink poink, all 276 of them, and start over, wondering what Sisyphus would have accomplished during a plague.
We all know that Sisyphus guy. The guy who claims he's working, but he never gets anything done. What the hell got him into that fix, anyway?
You hear things. There are an awful lot of stories, but in the case of Sisyphus most of them involve him going to hell.
He was the king of Corinth, and he was a smartypants. Gods do not like that in a man. First time he died and went to Hades, he wrapped Thanatos (a.k.a. Death) up in chains and prevented him from making people die. And that did not go over well with Ares, the god of war, who was no longer having any fun setting people against each other if they just zipped back up like a Whack-A-Mole set. Ares intervened on Thanatos' behalf and everyone got a do-over.
Second time Sisy died and went to Hades, he was all "been there, beat that." He was an old hand at this. He'd told his wife not to offer any of the usual sacrifices and tributes to the underworld upon his death, and so he had a little leverage. The soft spot was Persephone, Hades' wife. He persuaded her that if he could just go back to life, he could tell his wife to pay up. But of course once he was topside again he just skated on the deal and lived to be a very old man, because Thanatos did not care to see him again anytime soon.
There is no record of how his wife felt about him continuing to pop back to life every time she figured she could move on.
But eventually he died again, and this time the big guy Zeus checked hiim in and had the neat notion that if Sisyphus was so eager to remain alive, he should at least push that boulder up the hill for all eternity and see how he likes them apples. Which is a very familiar scenario to most of us, only in this case there was no prospect for retirement.
It was probably his wife's idea. She was probably up there sticking pins in a little Sisyphus doll. Over and over again.
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At least you are doing something productive even if it is an uphill battle.
ReplyDeleteI have a dear friend in your fair city who has used pins to stick in a Voodoo doll of a well known public figure and it ain't Sisyphus. By the results of the last few days it appears to be working.
I don't know how productive. Now the quilt is under the needle in my sewing machine and it is VERY tough slogging. So I keep walking away from it. I think I need an extended period of rain.
DeleteOh gosh that is funny. My sympathies! We need to discuss our next 'challenge'.... "Four episodes of a Netflix series later" just like me!!! I do think was the wife's idea!
DeleteAnd I STILL haven't finished this one. Jeez!
DeleteThat's 6 more pins than the number you need to win the electoral college. Woo hoo, let's go for over 300!
ReplyDeleteOn the way!
DeleteNo way would I remove 276 safety pins from the sandwich. I would cut off the excess on edge #2 to append to the too-short edge #4. I would hand baste that sucker on, press to one side, and go on my merry way with the quilting. Let the quilting provide the strength in that seam. But. Of course. You have OCD and must make this thing perfectly.
ReplyDeletePoor Murr.
I would just buy a fucking quilt on Etsy. (I HATE sewing. In high school home ec class, I vividly remember throwing my sewing down on the floor and stomping on it in a fit of rage. My attitude toward it has not changed, except maybe for buttons and seam rips.
DeleteOh, no, the fucking quilts have to have that crinkly layer to repel moisture. I hate that.
DeleteAnd also too, I do NOT have OCD! My life motto is "good enough." Or "it'll do." The thing with quilting, though, is you'll drive yourself crazy if you are not precise about your seam allowances, so I have developed some chops in that department, and it carries over into things like this. Because if I'm going to spend that much time on something, it might as well be a little closer to perfect. I did briefly consider just slicing off an inch all around, but I really didn't want a narrow border, so...
Deletemimimanderly - I totally agree. Sewing is the WORST. Except for buttons and serious emergency repairs - which I get involved in only under duress.
DeleteMy tongue was firmly in cheek, Murr. I should also have commented about what a colorful, cheerful quilt top you pieced. Well done!
DeleteThis was the second collaborative quilt I made with my cousin. We swapped off every other row and had no idea what was going to come back to us. Which is COOL.
DeleteThat has happened to me -- but more often it's the batting that comes up short.......but in any case, rather than unpinning the whole thing I'd just cut off about 6" of the short end, sew on a contrast strip that's the right length, then continue basting. [I piece quilt backs all the time with contrast strips or extra blocks.]
ReplyDeleteWhen it came right down to it, while I was deciding what to do, I thought: Well, what else was I doing with my time? The answer was "Not much."
DeleteColour me awed. I suspect that when I discovered the short side I would have said more than a few words and then rolled up the pinned cloth and set it aside till I recovered. Which might have taken considerable time...
ReplyDeleteIt got loud in here for a while.
DeleteWe have a neighbor I call Sisyphus. He shovels rocks off the cement pier and the lake puts them back. No leaves are allowed to rest on his grass. He, unlike you, IS OCD.
ReplyDeletePlus, he HATES BIRDS!
DeleteIf you taught Sunday School, I’d go back to church.
ReplyDeleteIf I taught Sunday School you will know the Second Coming came and went.
Delete"...when whoever was screaming has let up" - LOL ...
ReplyDeleteI have more than a touch of perfectionism in me, which makes it hard on my head when something like your situation happens. Mostly I just don't do stuff anymore because I don't have the patience to cater to my perfectionism. So I read instead. My hat is off to you. What a beautiful quilt!
Ugh, I am really struggling with the quilting part. I need one hell of a lot of rainy days in a row to finish it, but those should be coming up any time now.
DeleteI got to the bit about the missus sticking pins in...and I thought "I bet the old Greeks didn't make quilts. All the pictorial evidence we have for them and their sewing skills suggests that they just cleverly cut hemlines into what we call "key" patterns and left it at that."
ReplyDeleteAnd then I read on.(But I still think the Greeks had nought t'do with it.)
Now I need to know about those key patterns.
DeleteI have days when I feel like Sisyphus, doing the same thing over and over and getting nowhere with it, but then things fall into place and life moves forward, thank goodness. That is a beautiful quilt.
ReplyDeleteThese days Sisyphus has a leaf blower, and it's his neighbors that suffer.
DeleteHilarious. I have always loved Greek mythology, but never considered its modern application to quilting.
ReplyDeleteOh honey, I think I can apply anything to anything else. Doesn't always make sense.
DeleteThe swapping rows resulted in a really nice top. Very cheerful.
ReplyDeleteI'll be pinning a quilt in a day or two (waiting for the batting to arrive via UPS) and have been wondering if I have enough pins. For awhile I used a gun, the kind they use to attach tags to clothes in stores, but abandoned it because it seemed like I never found and removed every plastic fastener after quilting. Reading your post reminded me I need to be sure the backing fabric is more than big enough. I have dealt with that problem in the past and can live without a repeat.
Does this mean life is drifting back toward normal when we're talking about sane things like quilts instead of whatever weirdness is emanating from the White House?
That is my hope. Yeah, the batting being just short is my usual mode. I have tugged at it in the past, to thin it out enough to stretch. Not professional!
DeleteShooting plastic fasteners is a cool idea. The speed would make up for one or two stragglers that weren't found.
DeleteAt this point I might be tempted to shoot the plastic fasteners and call the whole thing done.
DeleteQuilts are too much Math... I just buy the ones I like and leave them un-repaired... gives em Character I say... and that Works for me. That safety Pin thing just would make me feel like the Voodoo Doll being Tortured on top of the Torture of Pandemic and the State on Fire... a Trifecta of Misery I'm not Down for. But, your results are Visually Pleasing, so Bravo!
ReplyDeleteIf only my results would finish resulting!
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