31 Awesome Things in 31 Days: Thing #19—Revisit the Denim Quilt Project

Note the book I should be reading (Daniel Defoe's Roxana—it's scandalous! It's also delightfully shorter than most of the novels I have to read before July 9th) waiting for me on the arm of the sofa and the next episode of Arrested Development waiting for us on the television.

Last year our Awesome Thing #26 was A Quiet Evening At Home, in which I cut out denim squares for a quilt, and David and I watched Sleepless in Seattle. Since then, I have finished cutting squares, but I haven't done anything with them yet. So even though last night I didn't necessarily finish my quilt, I at least revisited the project and made enough progress to inspire me to keep working on it. If you are like us at the Grover house and have a million projects that get started but never quite get completed, then you will know just how awesome it feels to open up that cold case, as it were, and bring the project to life again.

David helped me lay out the fabric squares while we worked our way through another couple of episodes of Arrested Development. I should add here, and I hope this is not a spoiler for anyone planning to watch this latest season who are somehow even further behind than David and me, that before we watched the third (fourth?) episode, I told David that I hoped both Scott Baio and Andy Richter would make appearances at some point in the new season. That very episode not only did Baio and Richter show up, but Conan O'Brien was in it, too. Triple win with a bonus!

Unfortunately, I was all downhill from there. David and I worked together to get the sewing machine back in working order. It's lovely to marry a man who already owns denim sewing needles. We had some really thick blue thread that we thought would be nice and strong, too. It was just a step or two down from fishing line, to be honest, and the sewing machine hated it. After the fifth knot or so, I reached my rage point and starting cussing, and finally sent David downstairs to work on the online class he is teaching (in addition to everything else on his plate this summer).

David was obedient (he knows how insanely unreasonable I get when I hit my rage point), and I spent the following two hours acting like the father from A Christmas Story when he is trying to fix the heater vent.

I should mention here that I really don't like swearing. I usually regret it, and I don't like hearing other people swear. And there are definitely more swears that I choose not to say out loud than swears I do say out loud. I tried to keep most of the words in my head, but the poor sewing machine was an unfortunate recipient of all kinds of terrible curses, both real and made-up. David could hear me in the room over and wisely chose to stay quiet for fear of directing my attention toward himself.

I recalled the passage in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath when Tom Joad narrates the sensitive touch of the jalopy they were driving across the country, and how the whole car would fall to pieces if he didn't give the gas pedal the exact pressure at the exact angle or if he shifted his weight too far to one side or the other. You had to learn your jalopy, master it, break it like a horse, and then it could do your bidding. I felt the same way sewing these denim patches with that ridiculous blue fishing line. After two hours and a huge ball of thrown away string later, I had sewn two rows of my quilt. Only ten to go (and then I'll sew all the strips together, and then I'll have to, you know, actually make the &$@# quilt).

In the time it took me to cuss up a gust and sew two measly rows of quilt, David put together an incredible narrated PowerPoint (with elegant and useful animations) for his online students—a remarkable feat with almost no fanfare, and I don't even have a picture of it to show here next to my @#%$ quilt.

You would think that hearing your wife cuss like a cabin boy while she is supposed to be experiencing the joy of 31 Awesome Things would put a husband in a similarly foul mood. Instead, he came to bed while I was fuming over Defoe's Roxana (who really is a terrible, terrible heroine with zero morals—this was also making me want to cuss), kissed me on the forehead, told me he loved me, and said goodnight. It was hard to fume after that. Perhaps tonight I'll try kissing the sewing machine on its forehead (which I figure is somewhere in between the Reverse button and the bobbin threader) and see if that brings me any better results.

All that cussing, and only two rows sewn. Perhaps tonight I will fare better, now that I know what I'm up against.

In any case, Thing #19: Revisit the Denim Quilt Project = officially ACCOMPLISHED (well, the revisiting part anyway—we still have a ways to go on it)