Covers, Covers, Everywhere!
Plus - adorable dogs and wild monsters
You know how sometimes you notice a thing, and then you start seeing that thing everywhere you look? (It’s called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon and you can read more about it here.)
That happened to me last week.
In the last newsletter one of the things I showed you was Padgett Pig reimagined as a paper collage illustration instead of a quilt block. I was doing the same thing with the new Beckham Bear pattern this week, and I realized the new version is like a cover song. And I love cover songs!
Suddenly there were covers everywhere I looked, all week long. I wasn’t seeking them out - they were finding me!
So this week I bring you. . . 10 Awesome Covers of All Kinds.
Rhapsody in Blue(grass) by Béla Fleck - a bluegrass cover of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. I LOVE Rhapsody in Blue. Is anyone else old enough to remember the opening ceremonies of the 1984 Olympics, when they had 84 pianos simultaneously playing it? The new Béla Fleck version is just amazing. I can’t stop listening to it.
I loved the Béla Fleck version so much that I started a new playlist in Spotify of banjo covers of songs I love. I did the same thing for cello covers after I saw Wednesday Addams play Paint it Black on the cello. (You can listen to my Hello Cello playlist here. If you have suggestions for songs to add, please drop them in the comments!)
Béla Fleck’s Rhapsody got me thinking about Sugar Rum Cherry - part of The Nutcracker Suite reimagined by Duke Ellington. His Three Suites was the first jazz album I ever bought.
From 2019, but my social media chose this week to feed it to me (I’m telling you - covers everywhere!) - a gorgeous bluesy cover of Karma Chameleon.
Covers can be silly too. I especially love this version of the Shaft theme song performed by The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.
One more musical cover - probably my all-time favorite cover - k.d.lang singing Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. So lovely.
In thinking (a lot) this week about covers, I decided that they’re not just for music. Food can be covered too! In a way, every time you make someone else’s recipe, you’re an artist yourself creating something of your own. But sometimes the recipe creator is also an artist covering someone else’s recipe - like turning all the flavors of French Onion Soup into a casserole. I think I linked to Smitten Kitchen’s French Onion Baked Lentils and Farro a few weeks ago. Now I can tell you that these also freeze and reheat beautifully. We just added some extra cheese to the top and gave it a fresh spin under the broiler. Yummy!
And then my social media decided to feed me another cover from 2019 - the connections were getting eerie by this point. 😳 This recipe for French Onion Grilled Cheese Sandwiches looks so good! (This is a gift link, so it’s only good for one month.) I can’t wait to try them!
Of course - every time you make one of my patterns, that’s also a kind of cover and you’re the artist reimagining the design. I love this ADORABLE quilt that Karen made with the Playful Puppies pattern.
My original version had a different color background in every square and no sashing. Karen added sashing and made all her backgrounds bright grass green. It’s a totally different look and totally awesome!
I LOVE seeing how you all play with my patterns - and I try to design the Mix & Match patterns for maximum playfulness. The ultimate play-with-me pattern is the Mix & Match Monsters. Since there’s no wrong way to make a monster, this pattern really invites people to go wild! That’s exactly what Veronica did with this fabulous monster quilt.
Not only did she use some of my templates in ways I never imagined (and have never seen before) she also added some templates of her own design. So Much Fun!
If you ever want to see what other people have made with my patterns, head over to the Shiny Happy People group on Facebook. You can type the name of a pattern into the search box and anyone who mentioned the pattern name in their post will come up for you to see. It’s a terrific feature!
If you know someone who’d like to read this, please share! 🥰
I’m switching things up a little this week. I love my new newsletter format, but it’s gotten really long - so long that many email services are breaking it up into pieces. So I’m breaking things up a bit myself, not running every single segment every single week, and moving the Archives and Sale information to its own post that will run on Fridays. You’ll be able to unsubscribe from just that segment if it doesn’t interest you, but I think the archives are the heart and soul of Shiny Happy World so I hope you’ll like the new format for them. 🥰
Have a fabulous week!
Best,
Wendi
PS I woke up this morning to one more awesome cover, of sorts. (Is it a cover when it’s the same artist but a new performance with different musicians?) If you haven’t seen it yet, Ryan Gosling’s I’m Just Ken from last night’s Academy Awards was super fun.
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