Over the last couple of years I have started sharing a couple of days a week with my sister, Tami. We get together and chatter away about this and that, eat brunch at IHOP (where she gets absolutely the same thing every time), laugh, and either go antiquing, looking for fabric, or do some quilting.
We took a class at one of the local fabric shops here to make a twin-sized quilt top. Our first real quilting experience. Good and bad. I hadn’t really “made friends” with my sewing machine at the time, so there were a lot of “not good” moments. I’ve since bought a real quilting machine and this one seems to understand me. We’ve never actually finished those quilt projects. Too big for us.
We aren’t like the extremely talented women who can create those massive, beautiful quilts over a year or more’s time. Okay, we’re more interested in smaller projects, arty ones. And we are happiest when working on something we’ve designed ourselves, rather than something from a kit. I’m not saying there aren’t some wonderful kits; just that we like to draw on our own imaginations and make something that means a lot to us.
The quilt pictured above is one I designed and made based on a really cute little English-style restaurant in Carmel, California. The Tuck Box reminds me of Hansel and Gretel’s cottage, mainly because of the odd little door and… Well, it just does. This is one of the favorite places my daughter, Angie (oh, excuse me, she is “Angela” now that she’s grown up, according to her), and I go when I visit her in California.
Anyway, I took several photos of the place and then designed my quilted version of it.
I have also made several other small quilt projects that mean a lot to me. I made one from a photo of Angie and me visiting the Blarney Castle in Ireland. This was my first project and let me tell you I learned a lot. A lot of “don’t ever do it this way again” stuff. Doesn’t matter at all, I still love looking at that quilt and remembering our trip.
And recently I made a small quilt that exemplifies the short stories I write occasionally about Blossom the cow. The people who have read and heard her stories enjoyed seeing the quilt. … Memories. I’m all about them.
