THE quilt conundrum.

when people think of quilts, the focus is always on the front of the quilt. but after putting hours and hours of work into a quilt, it seems silly to make a boring back. after all, with just a little extra design you can have a second quilt. fancy. sounds simple. but then you throw me into the equation and it becomes enormously complicated. first of all, i want to incorporate each of the fabrics that were sent by friends and family. ohh-kay, that is a lot of fabric, but with the perfect design it is going to work.

the design.

second, i need a base fabric (the large greenish sections of the design) that will be interesting enough to make a "second" quilt, but simple enough that it does not outshine all the other fabrics. oh and it has to be gender neutral, because pringle is a surprise. in other words, the perfect fabric. mmmhmm...no problem.

marimekko unikko.

luckily, mrs. nipper knapp recently succeeded in nudging me to expand my fabric horizons, beyond the local joann's fabric store, to include the internet. now i am confronted with overwhelming amounts of fabric, to say the least. i immediately fall in love with the glorious marimekko unikko fabric, which i have convinced myself, despite the flowers, is not gender specific. great! until i discover it is $43 per yard. jeepers. that is a bit much, even for my beloved baby.

back on the prowl, i  spent three hours perusing etsy, fabric.com, and purl soho. after ogling hundreds (maybe thousands) of different fabrics, i narrowed my list to nine contenders. and then the mister came home and put in his two cents and we are down to four choices. now we need your help. please please tell me your thoughts....or pick a favorite or two (keep in mind these swatches only show 4" of fabric and the quilt will be about 50" square). grazie.

roman glass pastel (kaffe fasset).

illuminating dots lime (penny lane).

paperweight lime (kaffe fasset).

stones earthy (naturella).

nitrocellulose cotton.

nail polish is somewhere on my list of the top ten products available in the consumer world. i love nail polish. and when i say love, i mean L-O-V-E, love. i am not sure how many bottles i have purchased in my lifetime, but the number certainly reaches into the hundreds. this obsession started when i was a child. for most of my life i avoided makeup, but nail polish always held me in a trance. throughout my adolescence i painted my nails regularly. by regularly, i mean three or four times a week. if i was wearing a red shirt, there was a good chance i was compelled to have red nails. right. between all of my daily activities and responsibilities, finding time for this kind of fingertip upkeep was a challenge. but then i discovered that i could paint my nails in bed and let them dry as i slept. perfect-O!!

but one thing impeded this process. the female parental unit. apparently when my mums said 10 o'clock was my bedtime, she meant that i should go to sleep at that time, rather than get in bed and paint my nails at that time. she was like a hound dog on a trail the way she could smell the nail polish all the way from the kitchen, but when she would come to check on me i would be laying on my stomach with my arms under my pillow - surely i had not just painted my nails? a few years ago i finally confessed and told my mums all about how i circumnavigated her bedtime rules. i put my arms under my pillow with my hands sticking out the other end. then i painted my nails and went to sleep. when mums came to check on me, i appeared to be sleeping on top of my hands, which from her view would mean that there was no way i had just applied polish. right. as you can see, my desire to decorate my nails far has always hovered in the realm of ridiculous.

i am sure you will not be shocked to know that despite yearly attempts to jettison the excess, my hoard of bottles had grown rather large. about three years ago, in order to avoid spending my entire salary on little glass bottles of goodness, i resolved to forcibly subdue the alarming growth of the collection. i instituted a few restrictions. i could only purchase a single brand. the winner? maybelline express finish. the rules? i had to throw away every bottle that did not fit the single criteria. whilst shopping i can buy as many bottles as i want, as long as it is this one brand. gifted bottles are not subject to the criteria (i just invented this glorious rule, because one of my lovely friends gave me a bedazzling assortment of juicy colors for christmas!!). so far so good.
the restrictions have certainly curtailed my purchasing, especially since maybelline hardly ever introduces new colors. grrr. if i had known of this in advance, i likely would not have selected this brand, although this fact has certainly alleviated my inclinations to constantly hunt for new hues. the current stockpile consists of only thirty five different colors. an adequate assortment to keep me amused and a small enough quantity that it all fits in a single drawer. but now rather than spend all of my time choosing which bottle to buy, i spend all my time determining which color to wear. since i am almost never without my painted nails, this is a weekly debate. seriously time consuming, especially as i am hampered by my own indecision. i put a different color on each finger and then make a selection. i color my nails with that selection and almost without fail i change my mind. it is a painful process. luckily i have a color consultant, miss pumpky. she does not seem to tire of issuing color decrees and never fails to provide these judgments instantly and decisively. thank goodness!! tonight's verdict? hot pink. apparently its going to be an exciting week.