New Squares!

I got some new squares over the past few months. Here is a belated update:

Maude Forbid screen printed a Boston B Party shirt to represent our B Team:

EZ Bake Shovin' retired this year, but she donated a square because she's just that fabulous:

This is a square-in-progress made up entirely of used track tape from one of our summer bouts:

Death by Roxy sent this from Vermont. It's made up entirely of used skate laces. Brilliant idea:

This is a uniform piece by the lovely ladies of NHRD:

And finally, a shot of the quilt as it is right now in its safety-pinned-together state:

I may have created a monster.

How have things been going in quilt-land, you ask? Since my decision to base my MSAE thesis project on roller derby has been approved, it's been going almost freakishly well. The panel that reviewed my benchmark presentation was pretty gung-ho about the quilt, and I've been given the go-ahead to go bat-shit crazy with this until my thesis show next year. Ever since last week it's been a quilt-o-rama at the Dread household, and then I got the crazy idea to email everyone I could possibly think of who's life has been touched by roller derby.

I spent the better part of three hours on Monday emailing every single league on the western half of the US in the hopes of getting a few more squares for the quilt. Over the past three days I have received over a hundred responses. Many are "I'll post this to my league and hopefully someone will contact you", which is simply fabulous. However, quite a few have been significantly more awesome. Thanks to everyone who has responded, but special thanks go to these three anonymous leagues:

"... can I have your mailing address and I'll send it out this week!!!"

"Oh, you're so lucky the crafter on our league also maintains the MySpace!"

"I can easilly put together a few squares to send off for you to add, but what I would really like to do is contribute a whole panel..."

I've simply taken to squealing every time I hear the little "ping" of my inbox getting another email. Tonight I'll hit the eastern half of the country, and I'll use this weekend to work on contacting international leagues. In my fantasy world, every state and every country will be represented on the quilt. That might be too much to ask, but a girl can dream...

Good news on the quilting front

Miss Print of the Cincinnati Rollergirls was kind enough to blog about the quilt project. Thanks Roller Derby Diva!

I just got my first square in the mail today. Zsa Zsa GaBoom was kind enough to create the following square:



Yay quilt! I hope that this is the first of many such packages.

My voice may be gone, but the quilting goes on!

I have laryngitis. Boo! This makes it very hard to teach, especially when my final projects happen to be fairly complicated and require a lot of explaining... this makes me sad. It's too bad that my "cries of anguish" are limited to making little fart noises with my mouth. Pthbbbbt on my lack of a voice. PTHBBBBT.

One thing is cheering me up like crazy, though. I've just started getting emails from some Kansas City Roller Warriors who are donating to the quilt. Yay for contributions from afar! I'm beyond excited to get quilty-goodness from skaters I've never met. My fantasy is to have this quilt be filled with squares from skaters and refs from across the country. Hopefully this will become a reality soon.

The emails keep coming

My inbox has gotten insane over the past few days because of this whole quilt situation. Waking up to 65-plus emails makes me feel so special. :D It looks like I'll be quilting my giant buns off for the rest of the summer. I suppose I'll be needing that thimble after all.

Want to see the quilt so far?

So tired of being sew-tired...

"Done" for the purpose of the class. However, I'm only just beginning the project. So far people in my league have offered much more help, people in neighboring leagues have expressed interest, and I've gotten emails from people in leagues far away who have offered to get skaters in their leagues to work on pieces together.

I think I'll be up to my ears in shipping costs at this rate. I think it will be well worth it, though.

Pics of the 16 squares I have so far will be forthcoming. I've safety-pinned them together for the purpose of portability, but I'm planning on putting borders around them once I've actually started to really sew them together. Man, I can't wait to see where this will go from here...