This took me longer to finish than I thought it would, due to about six weeks of pregnancy-induced nausea that made me not really want to sit at a sewing machine.
What's that? Sewing machine?
Yes yes, onto it, though we all know you skipped to the picture first.
Drum roll, please!
[fake drum roll]
I give you . . . .
THE REJECTION QUILT.
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If you look closely, you can tell both husband and I recently had colds. (AKA the drugs on the night stands) |
Every white square on this ridiculously HUGE quilt (about 7.5' by 9', ask me how easy it was to sew this beast together) holds a unique rejection letter from an agent or editor (I believe there are 49 of them). No repeats! (I could have done a whole row on Nelsen Agency rejection letters alone, but I never graduated above their standard, so they have only one square.)
The quilt even includes a rejection from Marlene. ;)
Now, the process:
First, only a sucker cuts her own squares. I used a knit (I think it was a knit?) fabric that let me rip 'em instead. Saved time!
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This is me being dressed only from the waist up. |
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This is Husband helping. |
Next I had to print out my selected rejection letters on printer paper (had to type some of them up to do this) and cut them out. Imagine my glee when I realized I hadn't gotten iron-on prints, but prints you have to actually sew around the edges. +2 hours of work to this project, at least.
Now, I didn't know this, but there is a TON of ironing involved in making a quilt. Especially when you have an easily-wrinkled fabric and printer ink that needs to be ironed in order to set.
Then I had to lay out the pattern. Pretty simple, white-black-white-black. Though I did organize diagonal rows by rejection letter length. And I ran out of room in my office to lay out the squares. That was fun.
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Right: I had to pile the squares up in order and give them numbers so I remembered what went where. |
Then I had to sew the buggers together.
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Three rows done! Each row had 11 squares. 9 rows total. |
....and then my 1960's sewing machine busted, and the price it would cost to fix it was roughly the price of a new sewing machine.
So I got a new sewing machine. It came with a CD. So high-tech.
Cue getting nauseous right . . . here.
[Six weeks later]
I finished sewing the rows and had to lay them out over the batting and whatever you call the under-fabric. (I am obviously not a seamstress.) However, there was one problem.
The quilt was too big to fit anywhere.
So I almost took it outside to work on, despite the fear of creepy crawlies getting stuck in my batting. But then, thankfully, if we moved the table into the corner, the quilt just barely fit in the kitchen.
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I did a lot of sweeping beforehand. Is "beforehand" hyphenated? Hmm... |
Then I lucked out and found out that my church actually has a quilting frame in stock. You know, because old ladies like quilting and whatnot. Husband helped a lot in setting that up. Actually getting the huge needle and yarn through the seams required work gloves, pliers, wax, and Pandora Internet Radio.
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Ain't he cute? |
Then I had to sew up the hole I used to turn the thingy inside-out (uh... see YouTube?) and voila, done.
The quilt is definitely flawed, especially since some of my fabric bunched at one of the seams... but that's okay! You know why? Because it's a QUILT OF FAILURE ANYWAY.
And it will be very warm come winter. :)