Sparkling Gemstones done

Yes, I finally finished this quilt...it sat for a year or more with no binding, finally I decided it really needed its binding.



It's a little wider than twin-bed sized. It works as a summer coverlet on my (double) bed - really, all I need when it's this hot is something to look pretty during the day and maybe put over my feet at night. This quilt's batting is a very thin cotton, so it's thinner and cooler than some that I've made.

This is one I had machine quilted. Some quilts, I think, look "right" with the allover machine quilting (or with the stipple-quilting; a lot of the "modern" quilts use stipple-quilting). Some quilts, though, I think look better hand-quilted and I put those aside to do myself by hand.

I think this one "worked" with the machine quilting, though.



The back is a place where I used a piece of an enormous geometric-floral print. I don't remember what I originally bought the fabric for but it didn't work for that, so I used it as the back on this quilt. It doesn't match perfectly with the colors on the front, but that's fine.



I often seek out, when quilt shops have sales or have a fabric they just want to get rid of (and have on a big markdown) the huge idiosyncratic prints, because I kind of like them for the quilt backs. I sometimes do use plain muslin, but I find that if I look around and buy in advance, I can often get some kind of colorful print fabric for the same price - or less - than muslin would cost. (Because there are a lot of people who don't like the huge idiosyncratic prints, or don't want to use them on their quilts...)

(You can see on the photo where I seamed the fabric. You do almost always have to seam quilt backs, unless you seek out the 90" wide or 102" wide or whatever special quilt-back fabric. But there aren't as many interesting prints in that fabric, it can be quite expensive, and it's also a little harder to wrangle with for pre-washing it and such).

I also re-did my "pedicure" (such as it is - I don't do all the messing-with-cuticles thing, and usually I only soak my feet after a day in the field or if they're hurting or I have a lot of bug bites on them). I changed out the polish. (I actually prefer keeping polish on the toes right now - I dropped something on one big toe a couple weeks back, got a blood-blister that discolored under the nail, and it's very slowly growing out. So rather than look at the ugly nail, I keep it covered up with polish.)

This is a new polish for me. I bought it today when I ran to the pharmacy - I had to get more cotton balls to wipe off the old polish, and I also needed to pick up a new bottle of Ivy Block for fieldwork tomorrow. (And I also invested in a bottle of Tecnu, which is a special wash that is supposed to remove the oils - it says on the box it was originally developed by a chemical engineer in the 60s to remove radioactive dust, I presume in the case of nuclear war, so I am guessing it's pretty effective on urushiol)).

The new polish is actually just a clear nail polish with a thick suspension of small glitter particles in it. (It shows up more or less in the photo - I didn't think it was going to show up that well)



The color is called "Rockstar Pink." I really debated against getting it - am I too old for glitter polish? Would it look unprofessional? Finally, I decided that as I'm not teaching this summer, the only times I'd be around in a truly "professional" capacity (at least, where people who don't already know me will see me), I would be wearing field boots - so no one would see the polish any way.

Besides, it makes me smile. I wasn't crazy about the use of "rockstar" as a term of approbation (apparently Vicki Howell sort of turned "That's rockstar!" as a description of something that was cool into a trend, and something about the phrase was kind of like nails on a chalkboard to me), but I like the pink glitter.

I use a base coat and a top coat. So far, I haven't noticed the greater breakage or weakening of nails that some people have complained about from keeping polish on them - so I'm hoping maybe specifically using a base coat helps prevent that. (I have fairly weak nails to begin with, though like a lot of things, they've gotten better since I've been taking a B-complex vitamin.)