Quilt-In-A-Day Ha Ha Ha Ho ho ho

I was just over at Thimbleanna's reading about her first quilt, and I started to write a comment and I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. Then my hand started to hurt from all the strenuous hunting and pecking so I stopped. And when I stopped some pistons started [I have no idea how pistons work or what they are even, but it sounds good and it makes me sound like I know about engines and such, so I'm leaving it in here and it's my blog anyway....] Where was I? Oh yes! Pistons. Firing in my head. Pennies dropping. And God knows, that happens slowly enough around here......

Wait a minute, I said to myself. There's a whole post in this. Why am I writing it here, then wringing my hands over there, without a clue in my head what to write? So I copied and pasted and took it home and told her to come and get it. Cruel, I know, but sometimes a person has to hoard her words. Her quilt, by the way, was beautiful--all complicated baskets with tiny triangular pieces and the accompanying bias edges that strike terror into the hearts of experienced and novice quilters alike. And completely hand quilted! Also faded, but just enough to give it a charming antique look.

That's your first quilt? Go on! You should see mine.





It still lives on the back of the couch in the TV room only because the menfolk have trained El Pussygato to attack the moving hand that stalks him from under the quilt while he snoozes, or tries to, on top of it. I'm not about to put a nice new quilt there so they can rip my loving stitches to shreds with tooth and claw and feline insanity! Meanwhile, it makes me cringe, it's so old and faded, and not in a good way, like Thimbleanna's baskets. Nothing charming or antique about it. Old and ratty, maybe..... If we had a dog I'd give it to him. The way it looks, you'd almost expect it to have a smell of damp dog about it [but it's clean, except for the ever present cat hair!]

Here's a picture of a leftover piece that's been hiding all these years deep in the scrap bag, safe from the ravages of cats and sun.






The pattern is Trip Around the World and it was [excuse me while I writhe on the floor in helpless laughter] a Quilt-In-A-Day! [What a canny business woman she was, even if she does make me crazy tossing things over her shoulder!] My children still chortle about that...........I think it took me three years, all told. We lived in the Peace Garden state at the time. I [hangs head in shame] sent it away to be quilted somewhere in the vast midwest. [In my defense, I didn't know any better in those early years--you mean I have to stitch all over it, by hand? Do I look like a woman who has no children? If I do that, it might be ready to use as a shroud for my withered bones when I die...a very shaky might. So I sent it away.] And was so impressed when it came back, looking like---a quilt----did I make that?? Aren't I the clever girl!

And so the die was cast, the hook baited.

The sun was very bright up there and I wanted something to cover the back of my nice new couch, which sat in front of the big picture window in the living room. The plan worked. The couch survived North Dakota unfaded, but the quilt took it in the shorts.

One of these mornings I'll walk into my sewing room, close the door, pretend my name is Thimbleanna, and not come out 'til I've made a gorgeous new throw for the back of the couch. Then I won't have to be ashamed of the ratty old couch because everyone will be too dazzled by the beautiful quilt thrown, oh so casually, over the back.





That, of course, will be after El Pussygato has a claw job. And the menfolk have their lobotomies.....