Sunday, March 28, 2010

This was started right after our trip to New Zealand, possibly on the plane home. That was five yea--cough-cough!--some time ago. I pulled it out and stitched for, oh, probably half an hour. Then sewed down the ends on the sewing machine: less than ten minutes. And there was the blocking--wetting, ironing, pinning, and leaving it to dry--maybe five minutes. So, a maximum of 45 minutes and I can kick a project off the Way Too Many Projects sidebar. (This is where you cheer. That's okay. I'll wait.)
So I'll look at that list again and ask, "Is anybody else a quick finish?" Well, the Nine Batik Stars should be done in a few hours. I'm just sewing down the binding--I've done three corners already--and will have to make a label. The label always has my name, the city, the year, and the name of the quilt. It's art; it needs a name.
And I've finally found the name for this one. I was thinking desert (because of the sand color), jewels (because of the tones of the blocks), and night (because of the stars). This took me to the middle east, then to Arabia, then 1001 Arabian Nights. I thought about the stories of Sinbad, djinn, mysterious caves, harems, surprise twists and then I thought about the woman who told all these stories: Sheherezade. And that was it. That's the name. Sheherezade. Cool, huh? I'll change it in the sidebar.
While Tiny's away, we cleaned the carpets. That's right, we did. We didn't call a company. We didn't figet and fuss that someone wasn't rinsing it enough. We actually went to the store and picked up a Rug Doctor and did the work ourselves*. And rinsed it three times. Yeah, that means we didn't do the whole house, but still it's very nice. If soggy.
*By ourselves, I mean the Man of the Place ran the machine. I just moved furniture, mixed the solution, and poured it in. It makes too much noise for my tender little shell-like ears.