06 August 2009

Lizards in my Bedroom!

Yes, you read that right. And the bedroom is better than in my sewing room, where they were born.

Lizards are better than spiders or flies, but still, the sewing machine was infested for nearly three years!

I truly wasn’t procrastinating when I didn’t finish the twin-size Crotaphytus-themed quilt I wanted to present to my boyfriend in time for his 40-something-th birthday. I’d started the quilt just a few days after making a cake for his previous birthday. It was our first birthday party together, and I was feeling some magical vibes. I wanted the next birthday to be one he would never forget.

His nickname is Lizard, and that caused me to visualize all kinds of fun designs. I began whittling away at a stack of rainbow-hued fat quarters I’d bought years earlier for no particular project, then appliquéing them one by one to thick black flannel because the soft, dark texture really set off the cotton batiks and would make a warm and loved blanket to boot.

Typically, I don’t get a lot of crafting done during the summer, when I’d rather be hiking in the mountains than stooped over a sewing machine. But I didn’t worry. I still had three seasons left to finish this masterpiece!

Fall came, but then so did a big surprise. Emergency back surgery left me incapable of comfortably hunching over the sewing machine for more than 18 months. By the time I was able to sew again, my boyfriend was no longer my boyfriend. He had become my husband (!!!), and a quilt for a twin-size bed would no longer be necessary or appropriate.

As the hours I could spend at the sewing machine increased, I began redesigning the lizard quilt. I could add a foot on each side and add a couple of additional feet to the top and bottom, and the quilt might be big enough to cover a queen-sized bed.

But then another dilemma entered the drawing board. I didn’t have enough fat quarters to complete any of the design revisions I came up with, and the original batiks were no longer available.

For a year, I tried to solve the perplexing creation I envisioned. I missed a good many birthdays, and my husband was about ready to give up on ever seeing this particular piece of cloth outside the sewing box.

I finally revised the revisions to include a new fabric around the original foundation, followed by a border of batik lizards and then another border of the new fabric. Voila! Kind of like a round robin, but I did it without having to send the quilt top around the country to achieve a hodgepodge harmony.

So now the lizards lazily take up residence in my bedroom instead of my sewing room. And The Lizard is one happy gecko.

I’m really glad I didn’t finish the quilt the year I started it. It would be neatly tucked away in storage now, a beautiful design that would likely never see the light of day. But who knows? Maybe fabric lizards multiply and replenish the batik stash when left too long in a dark linen closet…

1 comment :

  1. Link Within is great but it DOES get distracting. I keep wanting to read your old posts when I should be getting on with the day. :) Love the lizards.

    ReplyDelete


Dusty words lying under carpets,
seldom heard, well must you keep your secrets
locked inside, hidden deep from view?
You can talk to me... (Stevie Nicks)

All spam is promptly and cheerfully deleted without ever appearing in print.

If you are unable to leave a comment and need to contact me, please use the email address in the sidebar. Thank you!

Related Posts with Thumbnails