Ain't No Party Like a West Coast Party 'Cause a West Coast Party Don't Start

A general boo hiss to the evening here at Thread Zeppelin. Well, technically, a boo hiss to last evening which paved the way for my return home tonight from a friend's lovely birthday extravaganza to a room full of failure.

There's a pink and blue Drunkard's Path quilt rolled into a freshly laundered ball on the floor because hand-sewn seams don't always hold up against cutting edge technologies like washers and dryers. I removed aforementioned Drunkard's Crap from the dryer this afternoon to find almost every third seam gaping. It is on the floor now. Out of frustration. Well, at least I'll feel more involved in the quilt top if I get some of my own stitches in it, right?

 

Remember this guy? We aren't speaking.

I've also been working on a baby quilt for one of my darling nephews since he was born...last September. (And cue my older sister bringing up the unfinished quilt I started for her baby three years ago.) For Christmas, I let my brother, sister-in-law and tiny heir open the quilt as it was, with a promise to sew on the binding before they went back home. Understanding that there's no time like the present, I sat down last night to complete the task. I ended up getting cocky about my homemade binding knowledge and sewed the thing on wrong, oh, so wrong. (The corners look mad weird.) I meant to follow this great binding tutorial, but a creative genius can't be hampered by directions. Or common sense. Or timeliness. 

 

The Rascal Cat in repose under my nephew's 20th birthday quilt.

So, boo hiss it is. I'm planning on taking my mind off of the extensive unpicking and restitching and following directions that has to be done by cutting more pieces for that bowtie quilt I've been working on since last year...

**For those of you angels who've stuck around through this tirade, here's the good news: Ninja doll is modeling my brand new snood. Hollllllaaaaa!

A seamstress, huh? Well can she take out anybody's appendix?

A few weeks ago I tagged along with my lovely, illustrious friend, Dr. L, as she took a gaggle of her folklore students to a local historical farm. It was a beautiful summer day, donkeys were braying, pygmy goats were cuddling, a chicken was beheaded--the usual. 

 

An animal was severely harmed in the making of this photo.

As we were making our final rounds of the sprawling grounds and buildings arranged and bedecked to replicate a working farm in 1917, we stopped in the trapper's tent. A young man in deerskin breeches, no older than fifteen or sixteen, slung a flintlock rifle over his shoulder and nodded out toward the pasture where a team of mules was mowing hay. 

"Did you see him out there mowing with the mules?" 

I nodded in the affirmative. 

"That's probably just how your grandparents did it." 

 

They liked Johnny Carson.

I wasn't sure what to address first. I could have clarified that I was younger than 60 and that consequently, my grandparents had had a working knowledge and appreciation for things like the television and the vacuum cleaner. I could have explained that I wasn't from around here. That my people weren't farmers. That my grandpa measured your success in life by whether or not you could take out somebody's appendix. In a split second, I chose one sentence to sum up the essence of my family as they were in the year of our Lord, 1917:

"My great-grandparents bootlegged liquor in Philadelphia." 

I've lived in the West for nine years now, and I like to think that the handmade, handcrafted heritage of my new home  has melded with my self-identity as the feisty descendant of hard-working, drunken*, Scotch-Irish city-dwellers.

Maybe that's why I bought this today at a local antique store: 

A quilt top, to be exact, in case you can't tell from my award-winning laptop camera photo. A hand-stitched blue and pink Drunkard's Path quilt. 

I've always loved the Drunkard's Path pattern. I've heard it was a pattern popular among temperance people, I know it has other names, but hey--I'm no quilt historian. I just like it. It speaks to me and makes me nostalgic for things I don't know I miss. Like how the smell of beer makes me long for my grandparents to drink at my kitchen table and talk smack about the neighbor's kids. 

This quilt top has been sitting in some giant snake charmer's basket at the local antique store for months, getting crowded out by the stained blue chenille bedspread and a few other linens from the island of misfit textiles. I've had my eye on this little baby for a while. I'm gonna clean it, iron it, back it and quilt the crap out of it. I'm already so in love. 

It's an imperfect, feisty little quilt, sweetly colored and spazzing out all over the place. My kind of quilt.

*I should mention that my ancestors were not always drunk. Great Aunt Margaret is a nun, after all.

So You All Know Who You're Dealing With

 Things I Want, to Start: 

• white clapboard farmhouse full of my handmade awesomeness
• distressed old table in the yard (under some sort of tree, no doubt) on which I will cook/bake during the summer
• quilts, quilts, everywhere
• tattooed, weathered man to serve as general handyman and lover
• a gleaming feat of engineering and sewing majesty, the Bernina (any model will do)
• homemade bread, daily
• assorted animals: chickens, cow, pygmy goat (my friend Chris told me that "if you get lazy, animals die")
  
• some sort of bankroll to make aforementioned list possible (although, I hope I won't have to pay a tattooed, weathered handyman/lover)

Things I Have: 

• so many student loans...
• one Minou Jones, Rascal Cat
• neighbor child outside my window whose screams rival those of a threatened exotic bird
• a sturdy Brother XR-65,  the workhorse that continues to kick a@# despite my general ignorance about maintenance, e.g. I changed the needle last month for the first time in 5 years!
• nine hundred WIPs  and a stack of fabric that would make a hoarder blush
• a vintage wooden ironing board purchased for $8 at local thrift store
• a stash of vintage hankies (would it be gross to make a quilt out of used snot rags?)
•  addictions to: vanilla chai, sewing blogs, thrift stores and making things I can't find anywhere else

Stick around if you want to see where this goes.