Quilting

My mom had a quilt in-progress, mostly tucked away in a drawer, for most of my life.  Started before I was born, it contained material from my baby clothes and mom’s maternity clothes, most of which she sewed herself.  In my early 20s, she bought a quilting frame, and we all pitched in and finished off the quilt by the time I was 30; you can see the yellow butterfly quilt below.  Since then, we’ve gotten a little faster with quilts – my sister Cassie’s red lod cabin quilt has been about 8 years, and is getting fairly close.  My Ohio Star “Lodge Quilt” (so called because it’s intended for my now-imaginary but evertually real Canadiana-themed cabin) has been about 4 years, and Cassie and Sammi’s soft, bright flannel quilt has come together in a few months, though the squares haven’t been pieced yet.

The nice thing about these projects is that there’s no real hurry to finish them – you can work on them as you please, and savour it, and when you want to put it away and wait for the mood to strike again, you do.  People who try to chivvy you along or tease you for the time from start to finish do not understand anything about this kind of project.

When it’s done, and you lay warm and cosy under a decade’s worth of experience, pleasant work, and memory, then you get it.

None of our quilts will be perfect – they all have their quirks and mistakes which an experienced quilter will notice in a glance – but that’s not what we’re striving for, nor is it really the kind of people we are.