Crazy Little Thing Called Love

This quilt and this post are all about LOVE, in all caps! There are also a lot of exclamation points. If there are any deputized grammar police or super curmudgeons who read this blog, this is your warning.

At a young age, I learned the power of the words LOVE and its opposite hate. My lesson on how powerful the word hate can be came from being asked “How would you feel if you heard that the onion hates you?” Well, I sure wouldn’t like that so I quickly realized how impactful the word hate is. I didn’t receive a similar lesson above the power of LOVE because it was all around me. My family says, and shows, their LOVE and enthusiasm constantly with minimal reservation. It is not overused; we are genuinely expressing our affections. In my world, LOVE is precious and also everywhere. I may express my LOVE dozens of times a day and am always sincere. When I say that I LOVE spinach, I mean it! Since I’m putting these words out on the scary permanent internet, to be clear this doesn’t mean that I LOVE my husband and tacos equally, obviously. And if a word exists that describes the absolute maximum amount of LOVE, well that is how I feel about quilting.

The definition of a hobby or a craft is an activity that is time intensive, rewarding, distracting and something you LOVE to do. Our western capitalist economic equation is that time equals money and participating in a craft defies this math. When you engage in a hobby or a craft, you are stating that the pleasure derived from that activity is the reward, no matter the other “costs”. However, there is another mathematical component here and that is multiplication. When you create something with your hands, heart and mind, there is both the LOVE of making and there is the final product that spreads the LOVE. I was slammed with the realization of just how much I LOVE quilting during the creation of my last 3 quilts. The fact that I can give away what I create and spread this LOVE, well it is the best damn feeling in the world to multiply my LOVE. I presume that all crafters (be it musicians, cooks, sewists, painters, woodworkers, etc.) experience this; there is the LOVE you get while creating and the LOVE you give with the end product.

This is an extra special quilt to me as it was designed and made in celebration of my sister’s wedding. I purchased these two fabrics intentionally for the couple. The colors are inspired by: football affiliations (him Miami Dolphins, seriously and her Denver Broncos), spectacular sunrises and sunsets (in Florida and Colorado) and a little bit Kraft mac and cheese box because my sister LOVES mac and cheese. Inspiration can be found everywhere! I LOVE the contrast between the orange batik and the turquoise grunge, and the subtle pattern on each fabric also intrigued me. Just like on my Lucinda Williams quilt, I started off this design by making large half-square triangles. I am in LOVE with the versatility of the HST; like spinach it goes with everything! After I sewed up a good amount of blocks, I placed them on my design wall and living room floor (a good excuse to mop) and played around to see what worked best. I also took a lot of photos in different arrangements to help make my decision. It is not a humblebrag to say that this quilt was not difficult to design. If you want to create your own design without stress, whip up a bunch of HST, pump up the tunes and have a blast!

This is the largest quilt I have ever made with a final size of 100″ x 100″. That is inches, folks! (Insert Spinal Tap joke about the consequences of apostrophes versus quotation marks when denoting measurements. “So, we are not playing Stonehenge tonight?”) As we all know, I don’t often plan out my projects, preferring instead to let my mood and music inspire me. This method naturally provided some, er, challenges for a quilt this size. Since I winged this pattern, there were a few doh! moments: the most consequential is that I ran out of fabric halfway through the top. When you are making a ginormous quilt with only two colors, it is imperative that you consider how much fabric you actually have before you start. Also, when you are buying the end of a bolt of out of print fabric, it’s prudent to make note of this too. My crisis was averted thanks to my pals at the quilt shop I LOVE and to the internet where you can literally buy anything and have it mailed to your door. This is a very large quilt and there was some wrangling during construction that challenged me. I am thankful that my sewing table is made from an old door because I utilized every ” (inch) of it.

My design and my color palette make this quilt awesome, but the cherry on top is the exceptional longarm quilting. (In case there are any non-quilters who read this, a longarm is a sedan sized magical sewing machine that stitches overall designs on a quilt.) I LOVE to do everything myself except that this piece is way too large for me to successfully quilt on my own. I presented the idea of a circular pattern to the longarm quilter and she suggested this “crop circles” pantograph. Paired with the variegated thread this quilting is, as the kids say, next level. The back is a moody night sky and the binding is dog paws in remembrance of my recently departed dog nephew Hercules. This quilt is also so big that I could not stretch out to hold it up for a photograph and it snapped our clothesline, therefore the stunt picture from above with my beloved standing atop a sawhorse.

Every bit of this quilt is about the couple — especially the tunes. This couple LOVES Queen and by LOVES Queen I mean they have a painting of Freddie Mercury in their living room. I mean their first dance as a married couple was choregraphed to a Queen song. I personally haven’t listened to this much Queen since the early 90s’ at a Denver Museum of Natural History laser show. (No surprise, my favorite was Led Zeppelin.) Are laser shows even a thing anymore? Anyhow, after delving into all that is Queen, I learned that there is a lot more to Queen than just Wayne’s World operatic ballads or stadium staples. There is the song “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” written by Freddie as a tribute to Elvis Presley with a swingy Memphis sound to it. It is a good song that I don’t think people recognize as a Queen song. And let’s not forget that Queen co-wrote “Under Pressure” with Bowie, famously poached by none other than Vanilla Ice, the master of convention concerts. It was very interesting to sew to “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “We Are the Champions” and “Another One Bites the Dust” and a journey I would not have embarked on before this quilt. I must admit that it is quite fun to iron to “Another One Bites the Dust” in case you are interested…

I am so damn proud of how this quilt turned out because even if I had a trillion sisters, she would still be my absolute favorite! I truly LOVE this couple! I LOVE how the colors paired. I LOVE the design. I LOVE how the quilt vibrates with energy. I LOVE that I created an heirloom (and yes, I labeled it). Cheers to that crazy little thing called LOVE!

Albums listened to: Queen “Greatest Hits I, II & III”, “Sheer Heart Attack”, “Jazz”; David Bowie “Heroes”.