4

fShare

Tweet

Story Submitted by mrs-mookie.

When my young son (now age 15) played baseball, it made me crazy. I cringed as he was at bat, I closed my eyes each time he threw a pitch, and when he fielded the ball, I prayed really hard. If he made an error, I was a basket case for the rest of the game. When he graduated from Little League and became a serious baseball player, I said the heck with this. I'll take a project to the games and concentrate on that, while peripherally enjoying the game. So I went to my trusty fabric shop and got the fabric to make twelve blocks, based on Judy Martin's Carnival Ride block with Laurel Burch's Jungle Song elephants as the focus. Needless to say, my son was less than pleased. Not only was his mom not really watching him play, but now HE had to be the kid with the weirdo mom who was all covered with thread and pieces of fabric, scissors clipped to her shoulder, and pins stuck all in her (uh-hum) bosom. As the quilt grew larger and larger (and larger still), so did his embarrassment. This quilt took on a life of its own, as you know quilts are prone to do. It said, "Shouldn't I have a picture in the middle?" Well, I don't really draw, but okay, so I doodled a couple of elephants. "Wouldn't it be better if the picture was on point?" asked the quilt. Quilts have absolutely NO IDEA how big they will grow when they turn their medallion on point, do they? Alright. "I want Swarovski crystals on my polka dots!" it cried. Do you have any idea how many crystals that is? how much time? money? So I ordered 15 gross of 8 different colors and I still ran out. Then, according to the original plan, I hand pieced a beautiful pinwheel border for the edge, but when I put on the inner border the quilt said, "I'm done now. I'm sorry you made all those blocks, but I don't need them. Oops." Shoot! All that trouble for nothing. But what's a quilter to do? Quilts are SMART. We just have to listen to them and then sit back and admire the phenomenal results. That's what it is all about.