Meandering through other blogs

I skimmed through a few blogs as an assignment for my class, and paused to summarize a few.

To begin, I found a quilting blog that I really liked. Crazy mom quilts blog, has several of her quilts she made, but I wanted to write about one specifically because of its title "happy go lucky." She created a quilt using solid white fabric with nine crazy squares and rectangles on the bottom corner of the quilt. She loves it and has been dying to make it for years, but honestly, it bothers me. The colors draw me in, along with the patterns of the squares, but they're only in the bottom corner and my eyes try to space them over the entire surface. I need to see balance and some type of symmetry! But nonetheless, it wears a spiffy name!

While extensively continuing my search through more of these quilting/sewing/craft blogs, I'm noticing myself weening off of the sewing/crafting blogs because I see intricate pieces of clothing, and my mind screams, "WHOA! I can't do that!" On my defense, I have never attempted to make jackets, dresses, or jeans, and therefore, these blogs lose my interest quickly. I don't desire to sew clothing; I enjoy my quilts way too much. So, I feel that quilting blogs suit my needs and present me with ideas and enjoyment.

After stumbling across a blog with a quilt that I could like after some major tweaking, I found a post with a quilt that breaks the rules of traditional quilting and puts a smile on an English teacher's face. Lazy Gal Quilting's blog from July 3rd titled "Slither Eek Boo Top," fused my interest solely because of its name, and the quilt lives up to its intriguing name. The pure incredulity of what it's made up of makes me feel so novice at quilting. She sewed creepy Halloween words together on blocks and pieced them together to make a quilt top. She claims that she"...did a fairly good job of balancing out the colors and sizes - not too bottom heavy or top heavy," and she adds, "I kinda wish I'd made two quilts so that some of these words had more room to breathe..." From my perspective, I couldn't think the quilt could be anymore brilliant or masterfully chaotic. I am biased, though, since I do teach middle school English and I love the concept of words, words, and more words on a quilt. It mixes a couple of my favorite things together!

Finally, I viewed a different type of blog. Marguerita posted her own YouTube video of a brief tutorial about how to chain piece and press seams open. She gave specific and repetitive instructions on how quilters should press open their seams, and she is completely right with her directions. She lets us know to open the seam with our fingertips and gently press the seam open with an iron, but never glide the iron. If gliding happens, then so does distortion of the material. And that is a quilter's disaster! She's a smart cookie. Listen to her.