quilting our lives together

“You and your sisters sure are bossy,” my husband said after watching us in action together last spring.
“We just know what needs to be done and want to get on with it,” I protested.
Besides, he has been married to me for 34 years and has never before said I was bossy.
But, that may change after my quilting sister came to stay for a few days to visit my Dad in the nursing home during the day and with me in the evening.
I told her ahead of time that our oldest granddaughter plans to marry Labor Day weekend using a 1950’s theme. I thought I would might want to work on beginning a quilt for her using some ideas and material I had been gathering.
That’s all the encouragement that my sister needed. She show up Tuesday with her board, cutter and book of ideas. As we made a left turn to our dinner reservation, I noticed a fabric store on the right and said, “Let’s go there for a few minutes before we eat.” My husband obediently swerved around and dumped us out.
We picked out mauve and country blue material, paid for it and then I saw a 1950’s theme quilt in pink and black which I thought would be perfect.
When we got home, our granddaughter had left a message, “We think that black, white and silver would be good colors.”
“You made mistake number one,” sis said. “You just tell them you will be making them a quilt, but you never ask them what color or design they would like.”
Oh, I didn’t know that.
Wednesday, evening I said something about the quilt and the materials I had at the house. She said, “let’s see what you have.”
We settled on a quilt of red, blue, yellow and green outlined with black and white as a concession to the granddaughter.
“Do you have graph paper?” the quilter asked. We found some and she mapped the way we would assemble it.
Thursday she took my dad out and shopped for red, blue, and black material. She also added a yard of Holstein black and white.
Incorporating my ideas ruined her plans for a quick cutting session, but she cut anyway, and told me it was “fussy cutting, fussy cutting.” But she thought it looked good, so she cut.
I sewed and told her to hurry up I was getting ahead of her.
Friday, after work, she greeted me with pile of blocks to stitch together. I managed to gulp down a bit to eat around 7 or 8 p.m. after I caught up with her.
The rest of the night we strategized the best positions for quilt patches and discussed what to sew on the back. She suggested a zebra pattern because it would go with the cow patches.
We came home Saturday with a black and silver pattern of a city in the night. For the border, it only took two hours to settle on black and white to create a road around the city and a gray border – no zebra print. We laid out a reversible quilt. One side for us, one side for the granddaughter and her fiancee’.
My friend stopped over to visit with lunch. She got a whole 15 minutes to eat before we put her to work ironing and handing me material. After an hour or so, she insisted she really did have to go home.
I sewed on until I could not see straight, fell into bed exhausted and determined to not move an inch on Sunday.
We finished assembling the quilt Sunday afternoon. Then and only then did we sit back and enjoy a movie and a leisurely, late supper.
Monday, I saw and bought the perfect material to finish a couple other quilts I have in mind to make.
Too bad she went home Tuesday, I could have kept her busy for another week or two.