100 Quilts

Christmas Star Quilt

Elizabeth E.

I was ready for a new Christmas Quilt. So one day in October, when I had twenty minutes free of grading, I thought about what I wanted, and really really thought I could get it done by December 1st. So I cut out a bunch of patches, and sewed up this square.

Ick.
Then the grading kicked in, Christmas fol-de-rol arrived and the patches still sat on the cutting mat.
This whole time I’ve had this patch up on the pin wall, and have thought, well. No.

Here I spent all this money on this fabric and I hate the quilt. I remember evaluating dresses I was making in high school, hating them all, thinking why did I waste my time on this? And then I remember my mother saying to me that you can’t judge the success or failure of a sewn outfit until you get the hem in. Of course, she’s right. She’s my mother. So obviously I can’t judge a quilt by one block.

Another factor in the design was my push-back against one-patch quilts–simple designs I see all over the web on my blogs. Quilts used to be about the grid and the geometric-ness of it, if I can make up that word. Then the art quilt hit, and people left the grid behind and certainly the quilt world is better for it. I love many of them.

And the current craze of one-patch or simple designs I think is a result of the large-scale design on a piece of fabric–a design that would just not look good cut up into teensy squares/triangles/rectangles and then sewn back together.

But when I glance at a bed, while I like the large-scale prints and the simple designs, I still long to see something more traditional and perhaps more elaborate, a secondary design that might percolate up from the first blocks placed together. So I got out my trusty-dusty quilt block book, which is simply pages of flannel interspersed with paper. It allows me to plan out a block in a portable form.

Four blocks done. I like how it’s coming along. I no longer believe it will be done quickly–it takes some planning and sewing time–but I think I’ll have it done by this Christmas. Maybe.

Journal Entry

To Do List, November 20, 2009

Elizabeth E.

Serious List of Get Things Done (take 3, 333, 234) Date: November 20, 2009

  • Dry and style hair (yes, it’s this bad that I have to write this on the list)
  • Clean off computer desk and dust
  • Find Christmas China plates
  • Plan field trip next Friday (Galco’s, furniture place, where for lunch?)
  • Do visiting teaching
  • Decide on Christmas quilt and begin to cut square #1 of 72
  • Stitch one block of above to see if I like it
  • Make the Bday present
  • Mail Keagan’s birthday card
  • Organize calendar pages
  • Plan meals
  • Clear off microwave
  • Find red berry garland for chandelier
  • Do laundry
  • Post Munich posts on travel blog (finish that)
  • Write in Munich notebook (if you can remember any of it)
  • Write in Florence notebook (if you can remember any of it)
  • Stay off the interent unless the “Tea timer” on Dashboard is going–a nifty widget that keeps a timer going for me when I need it.
  • Is there something wrong with me when I look at my house full of stuff, junk, dust bunnies in every corner, the constant hovering of YOU’RE NOT WRITING hanging over me and I’m stretching to find things to put on this list? Time to go back to the internet, or grade something.
Christmas Quilts · Journal Entry

Piecing Equals Writing?

Elizabeth E.

I’ve been working on this quilt for too long.  I’m really tired of it, but I can’t stop now as I spent a gank of money on the fabric and don’t want to just put it up on the shelf.  Besides I know I’ll like it when it’s done.  I hope.

When I was in grad school and slogging through the writing of my novel, it feel like sometimes I was being tortured, one paragraph at a time.  There’s days when even though you are sure you’re writing The Great American Novel, it’s all just too much.  I wanted short stories! Poems! Essays!  Anything that had a page count of less than twenty pages.

And now?  I want to make a baby quilt! A lap quilt! Anything with a block count of less than twenty blocks.

Journal Entry

Mastering the Art of French Cooking

Elizabeth E.

Last night Dave and I went to see the movie Julie and Julia. I’d read all the pre-event publicity–the interview in the NYTimes with Nora Ephron and the reporter making an apple tart, press about the food stylists, press about the preparation of the food, director’s musings (that would be Nora Ephron again), analysis by Julia Child’s friends and relatives–and I was ready.

We stood in a line at our theater, while the local oldies station was having a Spin the Dial and DJ event to publicize the opening. While standing there, thinking how nice this was that they’d publicize the opening, a couple approached us and asked us if we’d like two free tickets. Sure, we said. They slipped in line in front of us–seems they got them from the oldies radio station–and they’d get the tickets then give the two free ones to us. We chatted for a bit, then she said, “You are in line for the GI Joe opening, right?”

My first thought was “Do we look like the type that goes to GI Joe movies?”
But I said, “No, we’re here for the Julie/Julia movie. ” Dave added, “At 7 p.m.”

Oh, they said, and started asking others if they wanted free tickets. Okay, I should have known that the oldies station wouldn’t gear up for a movie about cooking.

I noticed that the audience in our movie was trending toward Social Security recipients, but we found our seats, and endured the endless previews (We found one we won’t be seeing: “Stepfather,” about a guy who’s trying to marry into a family with children and turns out to be a murderer. Great.).

It was worth it. The movie is a four forks rating, two thumbs up, a veritable delight. We laughed and laughed and were pulled into the Meryl Streep magic, and empathized with the plight of Amy Adams’ character (as well as her husband). We got a kick out of seeing Blogger in its infancy, and liked the fact that the movie was about the cooking and creating of the food, rather than the emphasis found in many current shows–that of the consuming of it, as well as trying to create it under manufactured false pressures. (Note to producers: I want to see a reality show of trying to fix a balanced meal, having just discovered you are missing a key ingredient, all the while answering phone calls, supervising homework, and navigating the toys strewn around the kitchen by the toddler and the baby. None of this Iron Chef stuff. I want Iron Mother.)

I went home and thought about buying Mastering the Art of French Cooking, you know, just to have the book. Actually the scene with the chocolate cake was a real motivator.
The copies I saw on Amazon were running in the fifty-buck-and-up range for a vintage book.

So, we’re eating dinner tonight and I idly look over at the bookcase. There between The Naked Chef and Fannie Farmer is. . . yes! Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I recognized the cover as being similar to the one shown in the movie last night. Can’t believe it.

It’s got some food stains on the front, and when I opened the cover, neatly penciled in the corner is the price: $8.00. It’s a first edition, 10th printing in August of 1965. I must have purchased it at an estate sale here in Riverside. I wonder if I bought it at Norma Baricelli’s sale; she was a neighbor who also taught me at RCC. I have no idea really, but I did pick up quite a few cookbooks at that sale.

So now I check Amazon since I have more specific details, in order to find out the worth of this book. I like that it has the same printed cover as the one in the movie, and see the little “Ecole des 3 Gourmands” logo facing the title page. I wonder if it’s worth that 50 bucks that I’d seen before.

Nope.
It’s worth $149.