On Winning, Wanting, and Giving

The good: I won Terrain scraps straight from the designer, Kate Spain.
The bad: This delightful news made me crave, long, yearn for my sewing machine, or any sewing machine. I spent the day dreaming of things I would sew, both with the scraps and with other fabric.

Kate Spain has become one of my favorite fabric designers. For a while, I kept gravitating to her work without realizing it (mostly prints from her Verna line) and then I started seeking it out. I have a bunch of Fandango that I'm waiting to use -- inspiration, please strike.

I also have a Central Park quilt in progress that sort of stalled out. At first, I planned for that quilt to be for my room, but in the middle of sewing, I realized I wasn't thrilled with it. Then I realized that I was disappointed in my choice of a light yellow solid as the primary solid when, as I pieced the squares, I really wanted more zip. Or really more green, Moda grass to be precise. Which is sort of funny because green has never been a color that grabbed me. But suddenly it did, perhaps in solidarity with the coming of spring. But I didn't have enough fabric to easily switch or enough patience to rip out the old and start anew. Which is why it sits, mostly but not entirely pieced, in a ziplock awaiting my return. At which point I'll finish it and figure out what I'm going to do with it. Maybe I'll give it to someone else, maybe I'll sell it, maybe I'll use it as a picnic quilt. I think the yellow would look good against real grass in ways that it won't look as good against the blue walls of my bedroom. Hmmm.

Speaking of what to do with that quilt, as I was writing this post in my head earlier today (am I the only one who does that? I have several posts mentally "written" that need to make it through my fingers and the keyboard to the blog), I was thinking about an offhand statement Deborah made today. In a post about her current quilt project, she mentioned that the quilt will be only the second one she'll give away. I see comments like this and variations thereof -- e.g., I have so many quilts at my house, I need to do something else with this one -- not too infrequently, and they give me pause. I've given away far more quilts than I've kept. So I read those statements and wonder, "Do they not have friends/family celebrating milestones/getting married/having kids/etc for which they need/want to give gifts?" A lot of these people clearly give other handmade items -- bags, clothes, jewelry, etc -- as presents, so this is not written to suggest they are hoarding their handmade goodness. Rather, it's the recognition that quilts (including challah covers, table runners, and "smaller" quilts) are simply my go-to for a gift. Hell, last night I started thinking about a quilt for something years away, a quilt that may never make it out of my brain, but a quilt nonetheless. What are your go-to gifts? Any standards that never get old for you?