Quilt Again, Plus

As you can see, I'm in the middle of a production mess...



So in the meantime, I give you another panel of the Childhood Quilt of Awesomeness!




Recognize anyone?



The Grinch is actually larger than Max in the panel - but because of the angle and curve I had to set the quilt at, there is a bit of an optical illusion happening here. You will have to trust me on this.









In the traditional television show (thank you, Mr. Karloff!) our favorite character by a LONG mile is Max. He is so innocent, so sweet, so enthusiastic; he's such a goober. How can you not love him?

Unfortunately my parents are finding that living with Max (in female form) is a bit less of a laugh-a-minute funride than one might think. It is possible that the Grinch was driven to his sour disposition by his living companion. It turns out that there is a limit to the charms of gooberiness.

Who knew?

Quilt Again

It's time for another panel from the Quilt of Childhood Awesomeness!

This panel is, as always, hand drawn. The new twist is that it is both painted and embroidered.
Multi-talented, my mom!

This time we are going from detail to the whole. See if you can guess what childhood story this is from. Who is this rodent, and what is s/he doing?

If pigs could fly...









Surely you know by now!











I think I can safely say that if you managed to reach adulthood in the U.S. without having been exposed to E.B. White's "Charlotte's Web", you had a seriously deprived childhood.

Isn't this awesome?

Thanks, Mom!!

Panel the Third

I think I must resign myself to the greyness of mornings, and either accept that these photos will look off color-wise, or I must take to preparing my blog later in the day.

Hmph.

On a brighter note, it's time for the next quilt panel! Aren't you excited? I am!

To those who have voiced understandable concern: I am a control freak and a lover of beauty, so of course I did not put the quilt in the crib. The Joyful Event was a truly lovely baby (really - well, he was darned cute, anyway), but he excelled in spectacular emissions from all ends, and in terms of the results being fade-resistant, the dye companies should be calling him for advice. Even doting parenthood has limits, and this was mine - the quilt got tabs so that it could hang on the wall.




Our next panel is from "Bedtime For Frances", by Russell Hoban. It was a favorite of the Lovely Husband's when he was a child, and of the Joyful Event when he was old enough to understand the joys of manipulation and procrastination - given genetic predisposition, that was at about the time the quilt arrived.



















Again, this was hand drawn and then done in teensy embroidery stitches. The woman was both inspired and a glutton for punishment.

Mmm...Custard...

If you couldn't tell from the first panel, the quilt my mom lovingly stitched and painted for her grandchild is made up of illustrations from favorite children's books. Not only favorites, but in many cases, favorites for several generations of my family. Some of the illustrations are different from the ones I or my mother or grandmother loved as children - I have multiple copies of some favorites, from different eras, and mom chose the ones she thought most appealing.

Which makes it a bit embarrassing that I don't remember which artist is depicted below. It will come to me as soon as this post is published, I'm sure... Shel Silverstein, possibly?


In the meantime, it's currently grey and gloomy, so this panel is going to be another embroidered one. This time it's from the poem, "The Tale of Custard the Dragon", by Ogden Nash. Which is a realio, trulio wonderful tale, indeed.

Here is Custard, looking appropriately Cowardly. Or possibly just confused...









Here is Belinda, heading up her brave crew.

If you don't know the rest, go read the poem!!

Hitching a Ride

I've hit a sort of doldrums. Or a patch of chaos. Or something.

It's not that I'm not producing; it's that I'm producing very, very slowly and feel totally uninspired. It's not that I'm not doing anything else with my time; it's that I'm much too busy doing things that have to get done to do what I want to do. It's not that I'm not doing anything fun at all; it's just that the things that aren't fun are SO not fun that it sort of takes over everything else.

So I haven't been able to drum up the energy to blog, and I realize that this has gone on long enough now that I could be accused of being neglectful. I don't want to whine about my problems (not more than the above, anyway), on the theory that doing so will give them more power.

What to do instead?

I will rely on the brilliance of other people!! Specifically, the brilliance of my mother.

I'm going to milk this for everything it's worth. Which is a lot. Here's the story:

When I first announced the impending arrival of her first (and it turned out, only) grandchild, my mom decided to venture into the world of Quilting. She was going to make a baby quilt for the little Miracle (little did she know...)

Not being the sort of person who does things half way, my mom didn't just make a quilt. She made a Masterpiece. It took her from the time we told her about the impending Joyful Event (I think I was about three seconds pregnant) until the Joyful Event's first birthday to finish it.

And now you get to see why.

Here is one panel. The light is not good right now, so I have chosen a panel that doesn't require accurate color depiction:








A Rackham Cinderella, rendered in tiny black stitches.
















Yeah. I've had days like this, too.