A stitch in time
Sep. 26th, 2006 03:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zoetheI have not yet begun to quilt.
Though this sounds like a revolutionary's declaration, it's simply a fact of logistics: the quilt shop is only open until 5pm most weekdays, and I was too sick this weekend to shop. Ergo, although I have chosen a pattern for Amy's quilt, I do not yet have fabric, and as I don't want to get mired in another project that will distract me, I have refrained from utilizing my lovely new sewing space.
I have not yet begun to quilt. I have cross-stitched - a much more illness-friendly activity - but not quilted yet.
I hope to remedy that this weekend. In the meantime, my older daughter has made a plea that I share her favorite quilting anecdote with all of you.
It is from a long time ago, in a state far, far away. Alaska, as it turns out. I had been quilting for a few years by this time, and Erin had grown up surrounded by fabric. Sometimes literally - one of her favorite activities when I was sewing was to pull all the fabrics off the shelves in my sewing room and wrap her 2-year-old self in them. This served a couple purposes for me: first, it kept her happily occupied when I was trying to get through a project; and second, refolding all that fabric meant that I stayed aware of what was in my inventory. If you know anything about quilters, you will know that they have a love even greater than cutting large pieces of fabric into small pieces of fabric and then sewing them back into large pieces of fabric.
Quilters love buying fabric. I often purchased fabric that I had no idea how I would ever use - it was just too beautiful to let it come and go from the shop without me owning a piece. So refolding all that fabric was like revisiting dear friends.
All in all, it was a happy, symbiotic relationship. For a while.
I can still remember the day. It was in December, so Erin was not quite three years old. I had just finished making a king-sized quilt of beautiful Christmas fabrics, and was sewing the binding around the edge of it, the very last touch, when the phone rang. I got up from the couch, answered the call, and returned only a moment later to find my cherubic, blonde daughter sitting in my place on the couch. In her left hand was my king-sized quilt.
In her right hand, a pair of scissors. With which she had snipped more than a dozen holes into the back of the quilt.
She smiled up at me. "I kilting Mommy! I kilting!"
She was so proud.
I was so furious.
You see, this was not the first scissor incident in the house. We had gone round and round on the topic of not cutting things up. And here we were again. Only this time, it wasn't just a t-shirt or her bangs. It was an object into which I had poured weeks of my life.
I stood there, paralyzed with anger, and thought, "If I touch her, I will kill her."
I snatched her up and deposited her into her crib with an order for her to stay there. Shaking with fury, I picked up the phone and dialed my friend Barbara, the leader of our quilting group and the mother of Erin's best friend.
I told Barbara what Erin had done. Barbara said, "Kill her."
This helped me regain my composure.
In the end, all the damage had been done in an area only about six inches across. I appliqued a large heart over that spot, and that heart is still on the quilt to this day.
Erin is 20 years old now. But she still remembers. As do I, every Christmas when I get that "kilt" out of storage.
Though this sounds like a revolutionary's declaration, it's simply a fact of logistics: the quilt shop is only open until 5pm most weekdays, and I was too sick this weekend to shop. Ergo, although I have chosen a pattern for Amy's quilt, I do not yet have fabric, and as I don't want to get mired in another project that will distract me, I have refrained from utilizing my lovely new sewing space.
I have not yet begun to quilt. I have cross-stitched - a much more illness-friendly activity - but not quilted yet.
I hope to remedy that this weekend. In the meantime, my older daughter has made a plea that I share her favorite quilting anecdote with all of you.
It is from a long time ago, in a state far, far away. Alaska, as it turns out. I had been quilting for a few years by this time, and Erin had grown up surrounded by fabric. Sometimes literally - one of her favorite activities when I was sewing was to pull all the fabrics off the shelves in my sewing room and wrap her 2-year-old self in them. This served a couple purposes for me: first, it kept her happily occupied when I was trying to get through a project; and second, refolding all that fabric meant that I stayed aware of what was in my inventory. If you know anything about quilters, you will know that they have a love even greater than cutting large pieces of fabric into small pieces of fabric and then sewing them back into large pieces of fabric.
Quilters love buying fabric. I often purchased fabric that I had no idea how I would ever use - it was just too beautiful to let it come and go from the shop without me owning a piece. So refolding all that fabric was like revisiting dear friends.
All in all, it was a happy, symbiotic relationship. For a while.
I can still remember the day. It was in December, so Erin was not quite three years old. I had just finished making a king-sized quilt of beautiful Christmas fabrics, and was sewing the binding around the edge of it, the very last touch, when the phone rang. I got up from the couch, answered the call, and returned only a moment later to find my cherubic, blonde daughter sitting in my place on the couch. In her left hand was my king-sized quilt.
In her right hand, a pair of scissors. With which she had snipped more than a dozen holes into the back of the quilt.
She smiled up at me. "I kilting Mommy! I kilting!"
She was so proud.
I was so furious.
You see, this was not the first scissor incident in the house. We had gone round and round on the topic of not cutting things up. And here we were again. Only this time, it wasn't just a t-shirt or her bangs. It was an object into which I had poured weeks of my life.
I stood there, paralyzed with anger, and thought, "If I touch her, I will kill her."
I snatched her up and deposited her into her crib with an order for her to stay there. Shaking with fury, I picked up the phone and dialed my friend Barbara, the leader of our quilting group and the mother of Erin's best friend.
I told Barbara what Erin had done. Barbara said, "Kill her."
This helped me regain my composure.
In the end, all the damage had been done in an area only about six inches across. I appliqued a large heart over that spot, and that heart is still on the quilt to this day.
Erin is 20 years old now. But she still remembers. As do I, every Christmas when I get that "kilt" out of storage.
