Gigi on a baby quilt made by me, ca. 2016

Peek into a quilters’ closets and drawers.  You may laugh, or be slightly shocked.  We quilters collect fabric like oenophiles collect rare wines.  Arranged by genre (batik, 30s, ethnicity…) or color, these piles of cloth are our (sometimes guilty) pleasure.  We delight in the colors, the combinations, the patterns.  The potential.

wedding quilt 

Each part of the quilting process carries its own joys and frustrations.  Joys: choosing colors, arranging pieces and blocks on the design wall, seeing it come together.  Frustrations: running out of fabric or thread, discovering crooked seams, ripping out stitches, adjusting thread tension on the machine.

Quilters paint with cloth.  Once a quilt is finished, I usually take a photo and then give it away.  Some quilts have a destination before I start them; some claim an owner while I’m quilting.  I keep very few.  At home now I have only five quilts: one in use, two stored away, one I didn’t make, and a baby quilt waiting for a baby boy to be born.

Quilters trade fabric and give it away, too.  Most of the Japanese prints I’m quilting with now arrived by way of a friend’s friend who moved house.  There are other creations for fabric junkies:

Pillows—

and a tree skirt, if you know a tree that needs one…