Stash report plus my house quilt.

Does a quilt add ripples when it has been used for years? I finished this quilt in 1991; for Elizabeth. She came home to visit with her baby Saturday and wants to take it home with her. I remember when it was finished it was perfect! (just kidding, I'm not sure it was perfect with today's experience but in '91's eyes it was perfect....It was quilted, bound and labeled.) I often sewed on quilts while Liz was young....one day I was working on a white on white with a bit of beige and she asked if it was a quilt for her. Yikes a white quilt for a 4 year old...I don't THINK so. I told her no but that she could choose which quilt she wanted from my stash of exchange blocks.

She choose the house blocks because one of them had been embellished before the exchange (the very reason I didn't care for them much was the reason she LOVED them) So I embellished the rest; some by her instructions; the toy train buttons in the window are looking into a playroom. The strawberries are in front of 'our house' since we had a bed of strawberries lining the walk. I raided my mother's lace stash for many on the bits of lace. I loved working on it and adding the embellishments; there's even a key charm by a doorknob.

I also learned that buttons added to a quilt cause additional damage with use. This quilt has been repaired more than any other; often when a button comes off it makes a hole in the quilt. When a button has done that and it has been repaired it made sense to me to add a clear button to the back to support the front button.

I had been making quilts for years by 1991 but when she chose these blocks I went to a book I had and followed the instructions to make a quilt with 25 12" blocks. It was SO easy when you don't try to invent the whole pattern yourself.

She chose the quilting in the border, birds, and 2 of the birds are kissing 'cause she told me to make it happen. We worked together ...well she watched me and talked to me the whole time I worked on this quilt.

I HAD read before this child was born; but it is hard to talk and read at the same time and Liz was not happy unless you were talking to her. I can talk and sew so I did. She was happy to stand by the sewing machine...facing me and talk. I don't remember her ever getting into stuff because she was always with me.

Stash report...1/8 yard in! I'm really trying to buy fabric for a customer's quilt and have been to about 6 stores in the last 2 months looking for the right fabric...I'm going to try tea-dying this 1/8 yard and seeing if it will make it work.

for the year;

in: 20.37 yards

out: 91 yards