Yeah, Yeah, I know. :-P

Hi, My name is Lauren, and I am a wholly inconsistent blogger. I'll try and be better, I promise!

So that mermaid picture I promised? Let's just edit that to say "coming soon." I got it all fused, but finding a border that works with the whole composition (not just in my cluttered ol' brain) has proved to be more difficult a tast than I thought it would be. That being said, it's at the shop in the office waiting for a border to find it. Someday soon, yes, I'll have a picture up.

So on to other things...
I HATE SUNBONNET SUE. I'm not intending to show disrepect to traditional quilting, but this is definitely not my style. This block specifically I find particularly boring and just...*gag* It's too sweetsy for me...I mean, I feel like I need to take a shot of insulin to compensate for the syrupy sweetness it forces through my eyeballs.

I take great joy in seeing Sunbonnet Sues gone wrong. I've posted these on our Newsletter before (which if you aren't signed up for already, you might consider it...it's neat!) but I'll post them again here:
Sunbonnet Sue has a dark side...
These Sunbonnet Sues are just plain bad.

But when Mom was with a rep the other day, she bought a Sunbonnet Sue book that...it pains me to say this...I liked. It is so friggin' cute:

Yeah, I'm a sucker for cultural stereotypes. My inner anthropologist (hey, I gotta make use of thise degree somehow...) simultaneously rejoices and cringes: my thesis was on quilting, and I'm fascinated by how different cultures represent other cultures, but the cultural stereotypes also kind of bug me for a bevy of reasons that I'm not going to get into right now...keep it quilting, keep it kind! But here's a sample, that incidentally I took a picture of for my friend Isabelle (Oooh yes, this is definitely a shoutout to my girl Isa!), who hails from Switzerland/Germany.

This is Swiss Sue. Each little Sue holds what the author has decided is a symbol of the country. For Switzerland, she chose the Edelweiss. Personally, I would have picked chocolate (Mmm...Swiss chocolate...) or cheese (Mmm...Swiss cheese...) This diet is going to be the death of me!

Anyway...I decided I would do this. Hell, I've never done a traditional style quilt so hey, why not. Little did I know! This is a HUGE FREAKING QUILT. It's got 49 Sunbonnet Sue blocks, then sashing and borders (duh) but at it's longest is ~90". That's a big'un! Oh and by the way, it took 6.5 yards of fusible even using the tricks to best use fusible area...and how long did it take me to trace all of those? An hour? 2 hours? Yeah...try 4 evenings at ~4-5 hours a pop. Clearly I've got too much time on my hands. Shouldn't I have a social life or something? lol.

So after 4 days of tracing (UGH) I finally got started on gettibg all of these little beasties fused. I'm *trying* to use my scraps. Honestly, this is a good way to buzzsaw through your stash...you might consider something like this if you have lots of little odd-sized scraps. So, here's block 1...little Chinese Sue!

The lighting sucks (I actually have those dang tube fluourescent lights in my house..yeah, like from the 70's)  so the color is a little skewed. The pants are black and the shirt is dark blue. I'm trying to keep the colors as similar to the pattern as I can, and I'll add my own little twists to the block when I embellish, which the quilt doens't call for. You know me...I can't just follow instructions like a good little quilter. Nope.

So...1 down, 48 to go. I must be crazy. lol.