Merry Christmas to me

I live in a tree,

I look like a monkey,

this is what I give you for free.

(sung to the tune of Happy Birthday)

Now, see why a decent poet is worth their weight in gold?

This quilt is what I picked for Rob to give me this year for Christmas.  Remember that last year, he gave me the vintage dresden plates that I appliqued to background and am now quilting.  This year, it’s a whole quilt.

It’s a small quilt, likely twin size, but short for an actual bed.  The blocks are unremarkable because scraps were placed willy-nilly without much regard to color or value, so the blocks are undefined. 

What drew me to the quilt was the mixture of the double pink with the black and white plaid used in the sashings and borders.  It’s just such an unusual combination.  Also, the quilt is soft.  I can’t express how soft.  If the backing were a silk instead of a cotton, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.  But, I know it’s a cotton as are all the fabrics on the front.  Oh, and it’s thick.  It’s quilted over what appears to be field cotton, not a prepared batting, so it’s lumpy and it’s at least 3/4” thick and the quilting stitches are huge and sometimes just wander around instead of being strict baptist fans.  Maybe two people quilted it, one with more experience or better eyesight than the other.

The back is just strips of these two brown printed fabrics.

This quilt was definitely for warmth.  And, it was well loved.  I think there was some problem, or maybe the maker just ran out of fabric, but this corner, where the border just goes away is a point of interest for me.  When I’m repairing it, I might even take that binding off (it’s just backing folded over to the front and sewn down) to see what is under there and if it can be repaired.

There is one missing piece of patchwork that exposes the cotton inside and the quilt stitches continue over it, so it was just the fabric that wore away.

And, there’s a mouse hole.  At least I think that’s the technical term used for small holes that go all the way through a quilt, even though I have no idea whether this was really made by a mouse or not.

Right now, this is my favorite block.  It’s one of the few with a good amount of correct contrast and color to give it some shape.  But, look at the center square.  She didn’t have enough of that plaid, so she just added a piece to make it big enough.  And, I love the double pink in the block corners.

We were in an antique shop several months ago and I saw the quilt.  This is always the first shop we stop at on our trek and it was in a back room and I decided to wait and see what we saw in other shops.  But, it stuck in my mind and I even thought about trying to reproduce it.  When we went back the Saturday after Thanksgiving, I was on the prowl for it and had decided that if it was by any chance still there, it was coming home with me.

We got to the back room where I thought it had been and it wasn’t there.  Oh, well.  I had pictures, like Bonnie’s photograph and release plan.  We kept going through the shop, which is actually a bunch of houses that have all been moved together and joined so that you wander from house to house to house and each room or hallway contains one or two vendor shops.  When we got further back into the buildings, we got to what was actually the back room where this quilt was still waiting for me to come pick it up.  I didn’t even dicker about the price.  It was well worth the $40 to me. 

I haven’t surrendered it to Rob yet so that he can wrap it.  I had visions of making the repairs and laundering it before I gave it up, but I don’t see that happening between now and the holiday, so I guess I’ll let him have it for a little while, so he can put it under the tree for me to open on Christmas morning.  Like a kid unwrapping a favorite toy. 

Okay, so I hope each of you has something similar coming for Christmas that will both charm and delight you.  One of my goals for next year is to redesign my quilt storage and type up information about all the vintage quilts that are unlabeled.  Some came from family and some were collected by me and I need to write down the difference before I forget.

Yes, of all the things I’ve ever lost, I miss my mind the most.

Be well and have a great Wednesday.  I’m waiting on Easy Street clue three, even though I haven’t finished trimming down clue two.

Lane