Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Border Wars

I love it that so many people are liking the sun quilt so far and are taking the time to comment. But I've just got to tell you that y'all are cracking me up. I can just picture you out there thinking "A border? My god, no, NO! She's going to ruin it! We must STOP her!!!!" Naturally this awakens the perverse evil twin side of my nature. I have a nearly-overpowering urge to sew big, WIDE borders consisting of prairie points, and pinwheels, and fat little Sunbonnet Sue blocks in pink gingham, and baste them to all four sides of the quilt and proudly post huge photos. I figure anyone who isn't immediately stricken with hysterical blindness at this atrocity, will go utterly and irrevocably insane and will tear off their clothes and run away into the jungle, where they will establish a cult with themselves as the leader, until someone is sent in on a covert mission to destroy them, at which time they will lie there on the crumbling stone steps of their temple and look up at the darkness, picturing the sun-quilt-with-borders, and mutter "the horror....the HORROR....." before going to their death. (Quick! name that book and/or movie! Bonus points if you can name both!) Unfortunately I probably won't carry out this Dastardly Scheme because a) it sounds like an awful lot of work for a Sick Joke and I'm basically lazy; b) I don't think I even remember how to make prairie points. Of course there's probably a tutorial online somewhere. If there's a tutorial showing women how to pee standing up like a man (and there is!), then surely there's a prairie point tutorial. But looking for it sounds like a lot of work. (see also item "a" re: lazy); c) I don't think I own any gingham, and if I did I don't think it would be pink. Curses! Another Evil Genius Plan shot down in flames before it ever left the ground. I suppose it will just have to live on in my mind. And now in yours! Aren't you glad I shared? :-) This "stop the borders" campaign reminds me of something that happened when I was in college. I was in a painting class and the professor had set up a still life and instructed us to choose just a portion of it to paint. (So even though we were all working from the same subject, we weren't all painting the same thing.) I ended up painting an assortment of objects against a cloth background that was a sort of Della Robbia blue. I was working merrily along and one day during critique time, I mentioned in passing that my future plans included painting a fold into the background, because I thought the painting looked like it needed a line element there. The prof looked horrified. "Noooo!" she cried. "It looks so good smooth! It makes the still life read as a sort of landscape. Don't do it, you'll ruin it!" "No, nooooooo" chimed in the other students. "It's a mistake! You'll be sorry! The horror...the HORROR!" (Ok, they didn't really say the horror thing, but I had to throw that in there.) I paused. Could they all be right and I be so very, VERY wrong?? But the painting was STILL telling me, pretty damn insistently, that it wanted a line in that spot! So between that class and the next, I flew in the face of all advice and painted a fold line into the background. The prof walked in. Looked at the painting. Looked at me. Looked back at the painting. "Oh" she said, "I see what you mean. That DOES look better." The other students agreed. Well, except for Gary. But then, Gary didn't like me and if I said the grass was green, he'd say it was blue just to be perverse. And to be fair, the feeling was more than mutual. I'd have said his green grass was blue too. So Gary's opinion doesn't count. So really guys...I don't know if I WILL add a border element...I may decide you're all right and the quilt and I are wrong. But if I do add something more, I promise you I won't ruin it. It'll be FINE. Trust me. My instincts are good. Worst case scenario, I have a lovely selection of seam rippers and I know how to use them. ;-)