Progress!

It's a little less fun to post this since the picture isn't very good...
But look! I finished the quilt top. Of course, it ended up being a LOT easier than I anticipated. Those strips were just so long--I guess I put it off because I was afraid it was going to be an ordeal. Or I put it off for the sheer, perverse pleasure I always derive from putting things off. That's a problem.*
Anyhoo, it's based on a tutorial for "pocket change" or something. (I went to link to the tutorial and it's gone! I bookmarked it but it's been taken down--I forget what site I found it on, but if I come across it again I will link it up). The top looks really pretty and I'm proud of it. Right now I'm working on the back--I had a few leftover squares, so I thought I'd incorporate them into the backing, like I've seen some people do. The squares are verticle on the front; they'll be horizontal and more scattered and in shorter, more varied lengths of strips on the back.
The middle panel is 5" while the four others are 3". I cut an obnoxious number of 5" squares, so that's what I'm using for the binding. I'm going to sew a bunch together and cut it in half so I have a really long 2 1/2" strip. I don't know how well it will work, but we shall see.
Our drive on Thanksgiving is just unbearably long, and I will need something to keep my hands from strangling the state of Ohio for its vastness, so I'm either going to be turning the binding or quilting this baby by hand over the holiday.**
It measures about 48" by 55"--I looked up other baby quilts and I think they tend to be about this big. Yay for me! It really got me out of my rut, too--it was so satisfying to have it put-together and pretty that I just holed up in that sewing room all day yesterday. I was very productive, which is, of course, out of character for me. I hope I can do the same today!

*I have a friend who went on antidepressants for a while and she said the most incredible thing about them was that they made her pay her bills on time. Crazy. She said she just got a bill in the mail, wrote a check and sent it off with a stamp on it (this was in the nineties, before click-to-pay stuff). That's not exactly revelatory for organized people, but for the scatterbrained among us, it is nothing short of miraculous. My friend told me because she knew I'd understand the extremity of such a change in behavior. It's certainly tempting, but she also said it severely inhibited her ability (even her desire!) to have an orgasm. A sex drive! My credit rating for a sex drive! Puh-leez. I think it really says something about our capitalist, Puritanical society, that we would even put something like that on the market--and know it will sell! Aaargh! Wait. Where was I? Oh, yes. Quilts...
Wait, though: before I quit this footnote, I have to say I understand that antidepressants do more than make you pay your bills on time. I get that doing that is more a symptom of improvement. But still, I am baffled by the public's willingness to give up sex for happiness. It is so counterintuitive, isn't it?? I just wish the pharmaceutical industry would have worked a little harder to keep their Prozac from affecting our lust. Listen, I'm still on my first cup of coffee. And I think I'm back to tree-in-a-forest-not-making-a-sound status, so I'ma leave to their own devices whatever logic flaws I've accumulated here.
**Listen, I know hand-quilting is just like dumb in this modern, machine walking-presser-foot age, but when I told my mother I'd gotten a presser foot for quilting, she told me that my Grandma Peg always said that a machine-quilted quilt was not really a quilt. I am certainly not such a purist, but there's just something about hand-quilting my first quilt that appeals to me. Grandma Peg died last year and it feels a little bit like honoring her dear memory to at least partially finish this little guy by hand. Plus I can do it while I watch TV--Ohio State plays Michigan on Saturday, and that's like the biggest rivalry in sports (even when Michigan is a terrible football team). I love my Buckeyes, and it behooves me to have something to do with my hands during stressful spectator-sport situations.