When I drove home yesterday, after having spent a fortune at Joann's Fabrics yesterday, purchasing fabric to make our dresses for the wedding, I realized how totally ballistically excited I was at the prospect of making Genny's and my dresses. Bizarre, I realize, but nonetheless, there ya go. This is my dress and Genny's is rather similar. I like the design of the one in pink without the braiding. I will also not be using the bottom ruffle. For fabrics, I picked out this for our bodices. Genny will have a dark purple satin skirt and I'll have lavendar. I bought some white and silver snowflake lace to go on the sleeves for both of us, so it should be pretty lovely.

Of course, at the same time I realized how much I was looking forward to sewing for Genny and me, I also realized how much I have loathed these quilting classes because of the one snippy condescending instructor. I think I wouldn't mind quilting if I knew I wasn't under some kind of ridiculous deadline and that I could take the time to do things more accurately. I further realized what I was looking forward to, was handquilting, but I still don't really know how to do that, so I am going to be trying it out on Katen's quilt. (CS -- hope you like it!) In the middle of this, I think the biggest bitch is that my machine essentially just up and died. It's reparable, but I think it's been going for a while, so it's sure made doing patchwork a pain. The face of the quilt is done, so I just have to get the padding cut out right and the backing and then quilt the face to them. I got out the quilting ring and stand out last night and I was getting all giddy with excitement. Then I realized I was just different from those in my quilting class. I just think there's something wrong with doing a straight machine quilt. I think that it's fine to piece with a machine, because it'll hold the seams better, but using the machine to do all the quilting bugs me. I even think it's cool to use the machine to do some of the quilting. I will probably use the machine on the outside to hold the thing together, so I can get to the middle and do the quilting I have in my head by hand.

To me quilting something for someone is about taking the time and energy to not only piece the thing, but to quilt it. In fact, I think that the act of quilting something is more important. My old neighbor's mother used to take solids and quilt them all by hand. Her designs were intricate and beautiful and I could see myself doing that and really enjoying it. Whenever I mentioned handquilting in class, people groaned, rolled their eyes, and said,"oh, that's too much work."

I guess that's the point to me. If you're going to go through all that hassle to cut this thing out and piece all these pieces just so, why wouldn't you handquilt it, even a little?

This change from mother to crone that I am starting to move into is interesting to me because I am finding out things about me -- like how much I like using my hands. I need to remember this as I fight with my diabetes. I need my sugars good, so I don't lose my eyes or my hands, so I can do the handquilting and sewing and cooking and canning.