Clearing Out the Backlog of Quilt Tops

The cream/white Candy Coated is finished—quilted and bound (and difficult to photograph well on a gloomy and blustery December day):

The husband always asks me, “Who is that for?” when I finish something. Sometimes I can tell him. Sometimes I can’t, because I don’t know. When he asked me that question Sunday night, I said, “The quilt is going to have to tell me who it’s for.”

The binding looks very dark in the picture, but it’s actually a medium gray that goes well with the gray and white toile print on the back. At 63” x 78”, the quilt is not huge, but it’s a nice size to snuggle under.

I’m so happy with the way this turned out. This quilt got me to thinking about those darned Squash Squad blocks again. I am trying to muster up the enthusiasm to revisit that project. I admire the business Sue Spargo has built up for herself, but something about a craft that is priced in such a way that only a small segment of people can afford to indulge in it really bothers me. (I can afford her threads; I choose not to spend that much money on them.) It is no secret that quilting is a billion-dollar industry overwhelmingly supported by middle-aged and older white women. I never liked yarn snobs when I was designing knits, either—those women who looked down their noses at knitters who bought yarn at Joann Fabrics and Michaels. I had a particular sweater that I would bring to all my cabling classes, where I would wax enthusiastically about how much I loved the yarn because it resembled my beloved Brunswick Germantown. And then I would reveal that it was Lion Brand Lion Wool, bought at Joann Fabrics. I would much rather someone knit with what is available to them than not knit at all.

I look at a quilt like this, made with scraps—scraps!—left over from other projects, and I am reminded again that expensive supplies aren’t necessary to create beautiful objects. So I should suck it up and get out those Squash Squad blocks and be creative with the supplies I have on hand.

I finished quilting a multi-colored Candy Coated on the Q20 yesterday. (Loops, of course.) It is ready for trimming and binding today, which will give me handwork for Christmas Day, when we traditionally sit around watch football and eat leftovers.

DD#2 texted me last night that it was snowing in Seattle; she has snow tires on her car so she shouldn’t have any trouble getting around. Snow tires in Seattle fall into the category of overkill, because it only snows once or twice a year there, but the only way in and out of the city in this direction is over mountain passes. I will happily sacrifice a set of snow tires to make sure that she can get home if she needs to, although she’s flying here for Christmas. When DD#1 was in graduate school in Spokane—which gets almost as much snow as we do—she was the designated carpool driver in bad weather because she had snow tires and knew how to drive in those conditions.

I’m going to wait until next week to start quilting Noon and Night. I also need to order more off-white thread from the store in Spokane, or figure out when I can make a trip to Washington state, because I went through almost a full cone of thread (3000 yards) on these last two quilts. It feels good to get through this backlog of quilt tops, but I am hoping we will be able to have Mennonite relief sales again in 2021 so I have a place to donate them.