Care Giving
Probably the best gift I've ever gotten. Plus: a dumpster calendar, and The Heard
* Great responses are still coming in for January’s Savor of the month prompt: Treasure. Join in here!
WELL RECEIVED
A couple of years ago I wrote about gifts, asking what’s the best gift you’ve ever given (and immodestly sharing my own answer). This was partly a reaction to the whole “gift guide” phenomenon that rolls around every holiday season. No shade to gift guides, but the best gifts usually involve more attention and care than a list of products can offer.
Which brings me to the quilt that E (my wife) recently made and gave me for my birthday. I am over the moon about it.
In short, it’s a beautiful quilt whose design playfully incorporates a figure that I’ve been taking pictures of for years. As I once explained:
I got interested in the different poses of the figures used on “wet floor” signs — or “Cuidado Man,” as I’ve long called him. Sometimes he looks like he’s moshing, or surfing. I have a lot of these. I think maybe I originally thought I’d research and analyze the various designs and write something some day? I doubt I’ll get around to that. But I still look out for new variations. Trust me, Cuidado Man is everywhere.
My Cuidado Man interest is a classic example of a “pointless project,” and E of course gets to (has to?) hear about all my pointless projects.
Anyway, she needed a kind of background and format that would facilitate lots of Cuidado People. She found what proved to be the ideal option in the Allsorts Quilt Pattern from Jody Groenendyk, a biochemist who is also an accomplished quilter and designer with an impressive array of contemporary patterns and quilts available on her website.
This “allsorts” pattern was in turn inspired by liquorice confectionery assortments that mix circular and striped-block candies in bright, contrasting colors. E customized the pattern and had her own take on the colors, but of course the most striking element is the army of Cuidado Folk being warned to take care, or suffering the consequences of incautious behavior: zapped by electricity, falling down stairs, getting clobbered by gates, tumbling off ladders. She searched extensively online to find figures in poses well beyond wet floors, and these are hand-embroidered onto the quilt blocks. In the end she titled the work, Cuidado Man in All Sorts of Peril.1
Add in all the time to actually make the quilt and I could just not feel more cared for, and about. E always gives great gifts, but she outdid herself on this one. Thank You Mi Amor!!
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