Quilts!

It’s positively awful here in the greater Boston area. We had a “tease” week of 60s a little while ago, and now it’s in the low 40s and pouring rain. So cold and wet, there’s actually talk of cancelling or delaying the Boston Marathon, which has not been messed with previously in its 111-year history.

In short, a perfect weekend for sitting in my newly-remodeled den/office and sewing to my heart’s content.

Actually, it sort of started with the fact that I slept very poorly on Friday night. My husband came to bed around 3:30am (he’s a night owl, anyways, and a friend of his is in town staying with us). I woke up when he came in, which is not uncommon, but then found myself completely unable to go back to sleep. Long story short, I was barely able to doze on and off until I finally got up at 6:45. Took the dog out for her morning walk, and realized I still had several hours to kill before anyone in my house would be awake. So I decided it was time to work on the twins’ quilts.

I made all of my cuts for both quilts, since they’re the same pattern, just different fabrics. I started with the “boy” quilt, also known as the froggy quilt. Cute frogs, bright colors, not excessively gender-specific. By about 11:45, I was nearly done piecing the entire thing and my husband’s friend came downstairs. Woke up my husband, made some pancakes for all of us, and sewed the final outer border when we were done eating. Love it! It’s just over 4 feet square, and took me less than five hours from cutting to finished quilt top.

It was a great morning. A little dreary outside, but my new den is bright and airy, and my sewing table is doubling as my desk. Popped on my iTunes (Joshua Bell’s Voice of the Violin was followed by Eric Clapton’s Unplugged, which was in turn followed by Brahms, Symphony No. 4), and I was all set.

I realized, however, that I was kind of on a roll. I didn’t have enough energy to do much of anything else, and my husband’s friend left for the afternoon to visit some other folks in town. I stayed in my pajamas and leisurely kept right on sewing with the second quilt. I remembered I had made the earlier claim that I could piece both of them in a single weekend, and saw no reason to disprove that hypothesis.

While, compared to the froggy quilt, this one is somehow undeniably more feminine, it is also not terribly gender-specific. I’ve been struggling with the “color” issue with regard to the twins. I want to get/make them different (yet coordinating) things, but while I don’t want everything to be completely neutral (yellows and greens), I also reallly don’t want everything to be either blue or pink. These two quilts seem to be a decent example of being different enough, without being completely neutral or completely pink and blue. I worked on the “rainbow” quilt off and on, and finished it early Sunday afternoon. Same pattern, same size, different quilt.

I have yet to put either quilt together with batting and backing. I’m taking a class on June 1 to learn a better way to do the actual “quilting” (I know only boring things now), so they’ll pretty much remain in their current state for the next month and a half. Tomorrow it’s back to my Lucky Star class, to work on the quilt for my brother’s wedding. And the more portable yarn crafts (knitting and crocheting) are saved for train rides to and from work.

That’s all for now. Four days until the next ultrasound/perinatologist appointment, two weeks until my shower in Chicago. I turned 20 weeks pregnant on Friday, which was kind of exciting. Time is flying by. I’d better get cracking on those sweaters…