My 2020 Quilt

I'll apologize in advance. Just like 2020, this blog post is going to be a long one. I'm sorry. So this quilt evolved over time. At first I was just going to use scraps from  my mask making in 2020. But there were some really special fabrics that I used, that I just didn't have a big enough scrap to use. Some of those fabric had been designed by Rob at B0rwear on Spoonflower. One he designed at my request. Spoonflower requires you to proof designs before they can be put up for sale. I reached out to Rob to see if he would be willing to sell me his proofs of some designs that I had bought of his. He offered to send me all of his Covid/2020 related proofs. I was ecstatic and realized that this could then be more like a 2020 quilt. I want to say tribute, but I don't feel like 2020 is worthy of any honor that  suits a "tribute" so I'll just call it my 2020 quilt.  Here's a funny photo of me thinking I could take photos of the quilt on my own. Sadly - I don't have the arm span needed, but I made do. 

I feel like 2020 was a black hole filled with darkness and despair. The year started off bright and cheery, and quickly turned dreadful. Covid was declared a pandemic  by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020. The following 3 months  felt the darkest to me. In that time I lost a loved one and knew of many friends that  had lost loved ones as well. Our hospitals and medical staff were stressed and overworked. Case just kept increasing with no end in sight. 

The back of my quilt features a fabric that says, "Suck it 2020" and a print of vintage book pages. The Suck it print is from Spoonflower - find it HERE. Once the pandemic was declared, I began working from home remotely. I love working from home but not seeing my coworkers - many of whom I also consider close friends really did suck. But we coped and we got our work done at break neck speed. We enjoyed Friday morning video coffee chats and kept our group texts and messages going non stop. It  took me a few days to get into a groove, but I soon found a schedule that worked for me. I went on a walk every day at lunch and also after work. In 2019 My husband and I signed up for a garden plot and in early March had our garden plot planted. I walked to the garden every day after work to water it. It thrived and produced more veggies than we could eat on our own. I learned to can! We started making salsa, pickles, chow chow, relish, and pickled peppers. I also learned to may jelly and jam and would have Mike pick up day old fruit for me to turn into jelly. Since I had a lot of time during  my walks to listen to something, I decided to turn to audio books. I didn't keep track of them in the beginning, but from mid July to the end of 2020 I listened to 23 books. That's why the back gets a book print.  

Since my garden did so well, one of the bright spots for me during the summer and into the fall of 2020 was taking some of my excess veggies to my friends and coworkers on the weekends. I'd post on Facebook what I had and see who might want some. I'd also text my friends that were not on Facebook as well. A few times we made trades, and that was always fun. 

I made a lot of masks. How many? I don't know, I didn't keep track. I took special requests and ordered fabric from Spoonflower while also using fabrics from my stash to make masks. I handed masks out to friends. Many came to my house to pick them up and it was always nice to visit with them on the patio when they came. I took masks to the hospital every month when I went for my infusion for treatment of my rheumatoid arthritis. I allowed the staff to get some, but asked that they give most to the other infusion patients. The infusion nurse often would go through the bag of masks and pull some out for patients coming in that week before letting anyone else look at them. Soon all the staff knew my name and that I had masks. I would take a separate batch for staff occasionally that were made with medical themed fabric o r would take them headbands with buttons to save their ears. 

In January of 2020  my papilledema came back. My Ophthalmologist was my only doctor I had to see in person in 2020. Papilledema is a swelling of the optic nerve. It causes me to have constant headaches for which Tylenol doesn't touch. The pain  is caused by increased pressure from the optic nerve. This condition has had me in for numerous CT scans and MRIs over the years. The doctors don't know what causes the papilledema (it is likely triggered by my rheumatoid arthritis) or why I tend to get it  for a period of time and then it disappears for a few years. My bestselling design on Spoonflower - thanks to the pandemic - is my "Trapped in my Body" design. It is made of radiologic images taken of my various body parts over the years. Here I am pointing to part of that design showing my head. 

Right in the middle of the image below are two prints I want to point out- both are blue-ish. One is a design I made of Ernst Haeckel's sea squirt lithograph. I recolored it and love this version. A friend asked for masks in it and I made some for myself in this design as well. Next to it is a Liberty Tana Lawn fabric. This fabric is pricier than most of what I buy, but I used some for a few masks for some friends. I made Felix a dress shirt with this fabric and have been hoarding the scraps for a quilt. Please note that the fabric was gifted to me in exchange for a blog post - I would have never spent that kind of money on fabric for a shirt for my child. I also want to point out the prescription label fabric - that was the fabric Rob designed at my request. I think  it turned out great and I bought several yards to make masks for pharmacy lab techs in my family and for friends who are pharmacists and pharmacy lab techs. You can also see several other designs by Rob - I really love the Quarantine tape and the vote stickers. We do have to be thankful that 2020 was an election year. 

If you are into video games, you might recognize the character there in the middle. I don't recall the game it's from or anything about it. I just know that Felix plays or has played that game before and I had scraps from another project. I made him a mask or two from the scraps and the rest of it is in this quilt. 

I was so happy that Rob had some vote sticker designs. I feel like the presidential election played prominently in 2020 and I'm glad it makes an appearance in my quilt. The upper left shows a film strip print. I used this fabric to make one mask for a friend who is a big fan of film photography. He loved it and I saw many pictures of him wearing it.

Please excuse the out of focus photo below  - and the fact that it's oriented the wrong way. Rob had some designs alluding to some people thinking that you could vet Covid (aka Coronavirus) from Corona beer. You just have to laugh at some of the stupidity that was 2020. So I am happy to document that too. It still makes me laugh.  

I used the mask design from Rob to make masks. Because why not a mask made with fabric with masks? Nearby are pieces of a caduceus design that I used to make scrub caps for a nurse friend. I also like that Rob had some Covid designs  of the virus itself.  

Rob also did a toilet paper design. Let us not forget the toilet paper shortage of 2020! Thankfully, I made the switch from  toilet paper to cloth wipes for myself for use when peeing. We managed to get by without resorting to any crappy sandpaper toilet paper like I know a few friends had to. 

I have a dark sense of humor. I had to have plague doctor masks. Many of my friends also have a dark sense of humor because I had to buy this print form Spoonflower more than once. 

See that tiger striped crown? That's so we don't forget about the best gift 2020 had for us - Tiger King. I don't know if I could have made it through 2020 without Joe Exotic on Netflix as the Tiger King. Somehow seeing that series made what we were going through not so bad after all. 

Many that got masks from me probably had this pink batik print on the inside or a red/pink/white print that us at the top of the image above. That's because I got a bolt of each of these fabrics for a few bucks in October 2019 after the fabric district was hit by a tornado. The bolts were just a few dollars each and I shared some with a friend. Even doing so, I think I still had 5 - 8 yards of each print. I used up every bit making masks!

Another design by Rob of hand soap. Who knew so many people out there were not washing their hands. I'm a big hand washer and even I stepped it up - probably a bit too extreme. I soon found my hands were always dry. Sadly, it could be hard to find the good liquid hand  soap some days. 

Rob is known for his sphinx cat designs and the cat wearing a mask kind of cracks me up. 

And it couldn't be a 2020 quilt without the poop emoji because 2020 was kind of a shitty year. 

Here I have some long hoarded Vera Bradly fabric of Mickie Mouse. I sacrificed my fabric to make a mask for my mother. 

I put one of my new labels on my 2020 quilt. I recently got these from Ever Emblem. I had to hand sew it down along the edges as it wasn't sticking to my quilt. I'm not sure if the problem is on my end or on the label end, but I'm going to try a label on another quilt and see what happens. It does look cute sewn this way, but I was wanting to be lazy and just iron it on. 

I didn't point out every fabric with a story. They all have a story. But I do want to say that if you didn't notice, there are many designs of nurses, doctors, and other medical prints. There is so much to be said about what those in the medical profession have gone through this year. My heartfelt thanks goes tout to them all for working non-stop amid the crisis. There's a lot more I could say about my quilt, but I could go all day. Now that my quilt is done, I'm not sure what I want to do with it. Do I use it? Do I folded it  up and store it away? I'm not sure. Currently it sits folded on my desk in my sewing room and the kitties are enjoying sleeping on it. For now, I'll leave it at that.

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