Treasures, Part III

The quilt we made last summer

I've talked about my treasures, the piano and the binders, and this morning I have another treasure to tell you about.

When I was a young girl, my mom gave me a sampler to stitch, just like the girls "in the olden days" used to do. As I recall, it had cross stitch and embroidery on it. I started with much interest, then got frustrated at times with having to take out my wrongly-done work, and finally lost interest altogether. As a young adult I was able to finish a number of cross stitch projects, but I never did take to embroidery or sewing my own clothes or some of the other stereotypically "girly" needle-and-thread arts.

Fast forward to now. My mother-in-law owns a quilting machine or two.  She takes in jobs for people in her area of Arizona, keeping very busy with her quilting business. As I looked over the various quilts she was doing a couple of Christmases ago, I got a hankering to try a project myself. I've made little baby quilts, but never a really huge project.

As I'm wont to do, I enthusiastically announced my project and talked about designs, and then got cold feet. I was afraid I'd do an inexact, messy job, and people would think badly of me. I was afraid I had bit off more than I would want to chew, and people would think badly of me. I was afraid I'd lose interest and quit, as I did with that long-ago sampler, and people would think badly of me. But by this time I'd committed myself. Mom was expecting me to do it, Husband was expecting me to do it, and we'd even planned a vacation to Arizona so that I could work under the gracious tutelage of Mom.

So I quilted. As long-time readers of my blog know, I picked out the design, selected the fabric, and was off on my quilt-making marathon. And the usual bumps in the road showed up.  Blocks didn't match up. I did things wrong and had to rip them out. I managed to cut fabric pieces too small, having not watched my ruler carefully enough, and wasted some of the precious fabric. Mom sounded a bit skeptical at first about the colors I'd chosen. I broke a sewing machine needle or two. And so it went. But before we left I had a really truly bona-fide quilt top pieced together. Hurray!  I took it home, added the borders, and then sent it back down to Mom, who bless-her-heart had agreed to finish it off the backing, edging and machine quilting.

And then it arrived back at our house. And wow! I loved, Loved, LOVED it. Mom had taken my hard work and funny edges and bulged-out places and turned my quilt into a thing of beauty. The richly colored quilt graces our bed, and I still get happy every time I look at it. I'm happy because Mom and I did it together, and it was a labor of love for both of us. And I'm happy because in the end she and Husband both seemed proud of it and thought it was beautiful. And I'm happy because it provided memorable happy hours of chit-chat at Mom's house as I worked on it.

If the "moths and rust and burglars" got our quilt, I'd be really sad. It symbolizes the warm welcome and love I've received from Husband's Mom ever since my life merged with his, and how much I treasure that. Because I chose to go with colors and designs that Husband would like, and because of the work Mom and I did together to create the quilt, it binds all three of us together in my thoughts. I like that. A lot.

Thanks, Mom!