Yesterday, Alice took a three-hour nap in the morning. Helen was at school. I had had to cancel tutoring for two reasons — I have laryngitis and yesterday had no voice at all, and because Alice had been up the night before throwing up.
So when she went down for a morning nap, I loaded and ran the dishwasher, and then headed to my sewing room for the first time in over a month.
I made a cover for the doughnut cushion that I will be sitting on for the foreseeable future, since I was tired of carrying it around in an ill-fitting pillowcase.
There are scrap pieces from six different quilts that I’ve made. There are scraps from five outfits I’ve made for the girls. And there are scrap pieces from other pieces of fabric that haven’t ever been used before, but have meaning anyway. The kokopelli fabric makes me think of Jerry, because our old house had kokopellis all over the place. They don’t really fit this house the way they fit that one, so we haven’t put them up here. And there’s another piece of fabric that came from a “to cheer you up” present that my mom brought me last year when I was going insane on bedrest. And there’s one more that just makes me happy to see it, for no particular reason.
I made it trying out a fun technique I haven’t tried before, and embellished with decorative threads and had a lot of fun playing. It’s removable, so that I can inflate/deflate the cushion as needed. And the fabric on the back is a remnant from the giraffe dress I made for Helen for her 2nd birthday.
It’s loud, it’s brash, it’s obnoxious, and it’s very very ME. The handle was Jerry’s idea, though he said, “Couldn’t you just make a black one?” He did say later that he liked it better than some of the quilts I’ve made. Which is a high compliment — our tastes are quite different.
So now, even though I have to sit on this thing, it will at least make me smile. 🙂
Only drawback: because it’s so bright and colorful, the girls are fascinated and keep wandering off with it.
I said as I got in my Mom’s car last night to go to the monthly quilt guild meeting, “I spent three hours in there today, and I feel new. I needed that SO much.”
and here is a closeup of some of the embroidery work:
