Writing about quilts when it’s ninety-five degrees out with a humidity level of 10,000% seems a little crazy, but I’ve hidden myself inside and turned the air conditioner on, so I’m going with it.

Last November I took a quilting class at a little fabric store, with the hopes of finally covering my beds with beautiful homemade quilts. I was in the class with three other women (all of them in their mid-60s) and was (obviously) the least experienced and slowest sewer of them all. While they were zipping ahead on their quilts and talking about things like ‘cutting on the bias’ and ‘seam allowances’ and ‘selvages’ and other terms that sounded like Greek to me, I was sewing blocks together backwards and ripping out seams and cutting squares that looked more like octagons. (I must say, I rather mastered the use of the seam ripper, though. I’m a grade-A seam taker-outer now.)

And although the other three women graduated from the class with a fully finished quilt top, I came out with a half done quilt top, with mostly crooked squares and no binding around the edges. And I couldn’t be more proud of that crooked ugly thing.

My half-done quilt

 Someday I will actually finish this thing so it can take it’s place on Alice’s bed. All it lacks is one thin border and one wide border. Oh, and batting. And a back. And it needs to be quilted. And a binding around the edges. So…almost done. Right? Well, like I said. Someday.

At least there is one dedicated quilter in my family. Ryan’s grandma does a ton of quilting, and we were lucky enough to be given one of her beautiful quilts. She didn’t make it specifically for us, but she may as well have, because I love the colors and the style so much.

The beautiful quilt.

Now, don’t look too closely at the rest of my room, because we aren’t anywhere near done with it. But look at this quilt! Ryan’s grandma hand quilted this. According to her, she has four hundred hours invested in this one quilt! I cannot even imagine spending four hundred hours on anything. I spent a measly three hours on my quilt before I lost interest.

Look at those details!

It’s a scrap quilt, and no two blocks are the same fabric, except for the white blocks. And they aren’t a solid white, but a dark white with a faint lighter white flowered pattern on it. I adore the hearts and swirls quilted into the fabric. This was all done by hand. Some of the pencil marks are still on the quilt where she sketched her pattern out. (That orange and blue and yellow flowered block is my favorite in the whole quilt.)

Despite my iffy quilting skills, I actually did a lot of sewing over the winter. Most of the Christmas gifts we gave this year were handmade by me. I’ll be showing them off soon, I’m sure, on the next hot and humid summer day.

 But speaking of things I’ve made, the cherry crisp last night came out amazingly, and I don’t even really like cherries.

Our half-eaten cherry crisp

Unfortunately I forgot to take the picture before we’d devoured half of it. I found the recipe on All Recipes, although I followed some of the suggested changes. I didn’t use any shortening, nor did I add more butter to make up for it. I made it just as the recipe said, just without the shortening. If you use sweet cherries, be sure and reduce the amount of sugar you use. This came out the perfect combination of crispy and chewy. Delicious!

Advertisement