I Was thinking of Making a Quilt...

...but not actually working up the energy to do much more than think about it. Boxes full of fabric have languished in the closet since we moved. I had thought of giving them all the the Center for Creative Growth, a wonderful organization in Oakland that provides space, materials and guidance for people with special needs to make, and sell art, but at the last moment I decided to bring them along just in case....

There's a lot of history in those pieces of fabric. I could remember a lot of the the quilts I have made over the years when I saw certain scraps of fabric, including quilts for all six grandchildren when they were born, several wedding presents, and whatever ones I could talk family members into accepting. I could remember which shop I purchased the fabrics in, the friends I made in classes there, 


I could never make a scrap quilt, (the original intention behind quilt making) but I could spend hours in trendy quilt fabric stores accumulating color coordinated scraps. The result was, of course, a closet full of the fabrics I either never finished using or never even started. And one always buys too much because it is a tragedy to run out and not be able to get any more.

This morning after our Zoom Pilates class Maggie got our Trail House coffee group together on Zoom. We wound up having show and tell with some of the projects we had been working on. Larry sat with his little Dog, Sadie on his lap.Tobi showed us gardening aprons that she never got around to making at Christmas and has just finished, and told us about her beloved chickens.  Most people eat their chickens when they get too old to lay, but never Tobi. One of her chickens is in a basket in the house .in what I called 'chicken hospice'. Bob, the psychiatrist, offered us 'psychotic drugs' but we politely declined claiming that we're already quite psychotic enough without any chemical assistance. Instead he showed us his latest painting, 'The Dance of the Covids'. I held up my phone with the picture of me in my homemade face mask saying that Dana had rejected hers because she didn't want to 'walk around with chickens on my face'. The Zoom group had no such scruples, and I promised to make all of them some. After experimenting with a few different substitutes for elastic, which I don't have, I decided the best thing was strings  made from old tee shirts. Not a bad trade for toilet paper and eggs....

It was a bit surreal if I thought about what I was actually doing, but he most fun I've had in awhile, delving through my boxes of fabrics for the perfect patterns for each recipient....