The Devil's in the Fine Print

***Warning: Quilt content ahead. Non quilters beware!

My friend Marilyn found a quilt block she loved and thought it would be beautiful on a bible cover. “I’ll make it for you.” I said, “just send me the dimensions and the pattern.”

The pattern arrived a few days later along with the necessary dimensions. Please note the word “necessary.” Meantime, with input by email from M, I'd gone excavating in my stash and selected some fabrics. And started to cut out out the pieces. If you’re a quilter, you know that adrenaline rush you get from a new project. I was in its grip and barreling right along. I'd cut a couple of pieces, sew them together, admire them, cut a few more and stitch them to the others. It would have been smarter to cut all the pieces before even threading the needle because then, surely, I’d have copped on sooner to how enormous it was going to be. But hind sight, as they say, is always 20/20.   

On top of everything, since Marilyn has been ill, fighting the Big C, I had decided to hand stitch it, reasoning that there'd be more love in it that way. Well, the love was there but the brain was out to lunch.

After I had stitched several pieces together, finger pressed the seams as I was taught to do way back in my first piecing class and held it up to the light to admire it, my brain came back from lunch.

“Hmm,” it said. “What were those dimensions again?”

 Consulted M’s note and confirmed that her book was 5 ½” wide x 8 ½”long x 1 ¼”thick. Consulted the pattern. There it was, in tiny print --- finished dimensions: 12" square.  For some inexplicable reason it had not, until now, occurred to me to check this. Twelve inches square was more suitable for an old record album cover. Considering the possibility of brains being out to lunch, don’t you think it would be wise of  pattern companies to make the dimensions the largest, most noticeable part of their patterns? Or for me to make an appointment with the eye doctor....

“So,” said, my brain, “I can’t trust you to keep your thinking cap on if I leave for five minutes?”

In my defense, while not a genius at math, I can do it. I can figure it out. But first I have to be aware of it. So what was I thinking, or not thinking, to start on a project without a care in the world for measurements?

What to do? I’ll be consulting Mr. Google about a bible cover. And, with my adrenaline rush deflated on the floor, I decided I might as well finish the block, but not by hand. Maybe I could make her a pillow from it? But it was a bible cover she wanted, not a pillow.

And then, both because of my short attention span and the three bananas, dying a slow death on the kitchen counter, I went and made banana bread and threw in some grated almond paste and chocolate chips because almond paste and chocolate always help with deflated adrenaline rushes.

I did gather up the dregs of my dignity and creep back into my corner to work on my older sewing project. All ye Bristolites --- do not despair! The last Little Red Hen block now has a pair of legs, her loaf of bread is finished, and I have to say she gives me a bit of a rush.

And there you have it: another day in La-La Land.