OMG! It's a Quilt!

One of the Charlottesville Area Quilters Guild chapters to which I belong is hosting a Scrabble quilt challenge. Make a small (no larger than 24" x 24") quilt based around a randomly assigned Scrabble tile. The quilts will be displayed at the all-guild meeting in November. I (along with several other quilters) got the letter G (worth 2 points).

It did not take long after the challenge was announced for the first Scrabble quilt to be shared at the Show and Tell portion of a chapter meeting. Interestingly, it was also based on the letter G. The quilt showed giraffes, two of them to signify the two-point value of a G in Scrabble. I immediately thought, "I don't want to do something like that" in part because I wasn't sure what the quality of my efforts would be and in part because, well, why be ordinary. I started to ponder the letter G.

The first thing that came to mind was the different ways a G could sound. First, there is the obvious way, as in the word "gift." That's a hard G, I think. Then there's the slightly less obvious way, as in the word "generate." A soft G. But wait, there's also the GN combo as in "gnome." I started to write sentences in my head as I walked the dog. Then I thought that Scrabble isn't the only game to include G and its partners in alphabetics. What the heck. It's easier to just show you part of what I came up with.

This is the front or top of the quilt. I say "top" because it turned out that this quilt is not made to hang on a wall. For full effect, it needs to lie flat. On this side, we have both a hard and a soft G.

There's also a second gnome since the one sitting on the soft G did not seem like enough.

 The white rectangles surrounding the center's g are some of the sentences I came up with on those walks.

Chances are that there are some words in those sentences for which you lack a definition. There certainly were for me had I not had dictionary.com handy. I put the definitions of each and every word in those sentences on the back of the quilt.

The rectangles on a diagonal are the definitions. They are carefully positioned to make them maximally useful when reading a sentence as shown here.

See why this quilt can't be fully appreciated if it's hung on a wall. The back also shares two images of the OG, the original gangsta, as demonstrated by Ice-T. The gun he's holding in one shot is just another G.

In terms of all those Gs, I tallied somewhere around 95 Gs. (That would be some deadly gravity.) The front and back background fabrics, for example, represent Gs. There's the human genome on the front

and goats on the back.

There are three fabric Gs; 22 Gs on board game cards; the soft G; the hard G; green thread holding the soft and hard Gs; three Scrabble G tiles; 30 words starting with G written in Goudy Old Style font; 30 definitions of the G words also written in Goudy Old Style font; two Original Gangsta shots, one showing a gun; and two gnomes.

Making this quilt was very much a learning experience. It did not occur to me until I'd sewn the first one on, but the cards and even the sentences could not be taken off and re-sewn. The holes from the first sewing weren't going to disappear, meaning I had better have them in the correct position or else. Rather than sew the binding down, I used a product called Liquid Stitch that a guild member learned about at a quilt show the weekend before. I printed the sentences on a somewhat heavy canvas. which was not a great idea. The only paper I had that I could easily run through my printer was white, and I didn't like the look of it against the pale beige of the letters on the genome fabric. The color of the canvas was perfect.

And, as I expected, all the other quilts shown so far at chapter Show and Tell sessions have been more direct representations of the letter. Some have had some things you might be stretched to connect to a letter, but so far OMG (Oh My G) is pretty much the only one of its kind. Dare to be different.

Finally, if you really want to know the definitions of the G words in the sentences on the top of the quilt, here are the four definition lists slightly more readable than in the shots above.

Beanie Baby Mutations, Parts V and VI

I didn't post any photos of the fifth Beanie Baby mutation since it was a gift, and I didn't want to spoil the surprise for the intended recipient. Since it turns out that her photos of it are better than the ones I took before I sent it off, you can see an elephant with butterfly wings here. It's not clear whether it's an elefly or a butterphant, but I sort of like elefly myself.

The sixth Beanie Baby mutation doesn't have a distinct name yet, but here it is. If that photo isn't clear enough, try this one. Or this one. It's Howl the wolf wearing the clothing (well, the skin) of Fleece the sheep. And like any good wolf in sheep's clothing, this guy knows where to fit in, too. With a couple of other sheep, in the shadow of the Bearodactyl. It's still not clear just what I might do with these creatures other than probably clear them from the mantle perhaps to rest in the branches of the Christmas tree. I have decided what's coming next, though, a rhinopottamus or perhaps a hippoceros, though I think I prefer rhinopottamus.

Beanie Baby Mutations, Part IV

Being a knitter, I do like yarn, so when a friend in England suggested that it might be fun to have a sheep that could spin its own wool into yarn, who was I to argue. Crossing Hairy the spider with Ewey the sheep was actually a bit more complicated that I thought it would be, and I still have a sheep's head with which to do something, but here's what Caroline's spinning sheep might look like. I'm open to suggestions as to what it might be called.

Beanie Baby Mutations, Part III

When the idea of doing Beanie Baby mutations and meldings other than SnailPony arose, the first one that came to mind (the sons' hivemind, not my own mind) was BearODactyl. BearODactyl actually arose from the mind of The Oatmeal. I'm not including the link to the specific BearODactyl comic here because the amount of profanity (words and ideas) that it contains might offend younger readers or their parents.

BearODactyl is a combination of Swoop the pterodactyl and Cinders the black bear. After taking Swoop apart, I had some help from older son on combining Swoop parts with the body of Cinders. BearODactyl differs from the first two mutations in that the ODactyl part is actually a removable costume. The wings are simply sleeves into which the bear inserts his front legs. The head attached to the wings is tied onto the bear's head like a bowtie not really visible here. In the wake of Halloween, I'd have to say that Cinders the bear is quite pleased with the power and prestige that accompany his new alterego BearODactyl. In fact, he looks ready to cast a spell that might determine the next mutation to help clean up the library floor. Can you say "conjoined twins"? "Wolf in sheep's clothing"? "Cat of nine tails"?

Beanie Baby Mutations, Part II

Start with Spinner the spider and Congo the gorilla. Do a bit of dismemberment (no spiders were harmed in this process) and experiment a bit with pins and poses. Rearrange things a bit and sew with invisible thread. The result? SpiderMonkey! I still don't know if SpiderMonkey will go out on his own or stay around to see what evolves in Beanie Baby Mutations, Part III. I mean, I have to get the library floor cleaned up somehow.

Beanie Baby Mutations, Part I

Take one Beanie Baby Snail. Dismember it a bit. Add a Beanie Baby pony. Insert some carefully placed pins. Sew. The result? SnailPony! My friend and BKP (Best Kendo Partner--we earned our black belts together) has a Pony named Pepsi. She also has a stamp dispenser that is a plastic snail. Somewhere in the fatigue of post-workout pizza dinners, the idea of a SnailPony was born. This plush version, a true one-of-a-kind treasure, was a college graduation present. Think it can't really be ridden? Well, you just have to be the right size.

A Boy Becomes a Man

I have a running gag with several friends about the imaginary pool boy we share. He appears at each of our houses as needed for entertainment. Given that we live in British Columbia, Illinois, and Virginia, the pool boy travels a lot. The friend in British Columbia actually found "Grow Your Own Cabana Boy" toys. ("He cleans. He goes home on the weekend. He's Built ... and by the way ... he's straight.") A cabana boy is not a pool boy, but it's probably the closest we can do. You may remember these toys from your childhood days or those of your children. Here are the INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE from the package back:

Place your grow toy in a large container of room temperature water. Your grow toy may take up to 10 days to grow completely. Watch how it changes as it transforms up to 600% its size. Remove from water and it will slowly shrink as it dries. Your toy can be grown again and again.

Those are the large-print instructions. There are also some small-print ones:

The larger the container of water the better your toy will grow. The growth is calculated as a total increase in mass and volume. As your tow grows it may distort in shape. This is part of the fun and will correct when fully grown. The slimy, icky texture is normal and harmless. Your toy may take up to 10 days to grow completely. As the toy grows the paint fades. Darker color will restore when toy is shrunk back to its original size.

Here's where we started back at the beginning of February. Cabana Boy was about an inch and a half tall. He took to water like a fish. When offered the chance, he jumped right in.
I brought him up for air and clean water periodically. In the interest of science, I also measured him from time to time. After three days ... A week after that ... After six more days ... Eight days after that ... And eight more ... At the same time, when compared to the original packaging ... I have no photographic evidence to present, but he is shrinking a bit more quickly than he grew. He is also experiencing some of the same contortions shown in the photos above.

In conclusion, was he built? Heck, yes! Did he clean? Unfortunately, no. Is he really straight? That's for me to know, and you to find out by getting your own Cabana Boy.