Love is...

..a handmade quilt, sewn with loving hands and handed down through the generations. This one was made by my great-grandmother Sarah in the 1930's and has been handed down to me through my grandmother, and then my mother. Then, why oh why ,would I put a treasured family quilt like that over the coffee table to make a safe and comfy retreat for my cat?  I know..it seems sacrilegious...

Well, rest assured, it is a temporary situation. Maggie has always liked a 
"roof" over her head - even if it is glass!  She misses our old coffee table and is not enamoured with the new one I have now and has been retreating to nap under the "roof' of dining room chairs. I don't know what it is about having a roof, but it seems to be comforting? 

I had pulled this old quilt off the closet shelf today, determined to find a way to display it, had then draped it over the table to take a photo for this blip and voila! Maggie immediately snuck in under it and laid down for a nap in what seemed to now be a cosy nest under the very table she doesn't like? So, I draped the quilt so that it created walls around her as well as a roof over her, and voilà. She loved it. 

So...just for fun,I will find something less precious to do the same trick ..and just remember to remove it when company comes! It does look rather ridiculous! 

Anyway, I am still not sure how to give that quilt some air time. I have the option of making a sleeve for it and hanging it up as I do for most of my other ones, but I'm not sure if that might damage it more?  Interesting how in those days, quilts were made to USE, and this one certainly was. It is well worn, somewhat fragile in that some seams have started to come apart, and it even has stains! Oh the horror! Like, I guess no-one worried that a quilt must be pristine...and preserved, hung on walls or railings and kept far away from cat claws,  and children. I arrived on the quilt scene when quilts were made to look at, or at least I thought that! I am now trying to change that and actually use my quilts as quilts! 

I look at this family quilt and I see that a lot of the fabrics are from discarded clothing. My mom used to say how much she loved to see bits and pieces of her own old clothes in her mom and grandma's quilts. Now we buy special fabrics made for quilting. Of course all the sewing on it is also done by hand - and you know, the stitches aren't always even and are sometimes a bit too long for the recommended number-per-inch - a standard that I was never able to attain. And what really pops out for me, though, is that the points do not always match! Oh no! Not that!  I have always slaved to make them meet perfectly! And yet, this quilt, despite its "flaws"  had a life. It was loved and it was useful! It is obviously time for me to be less obsessed with perfection, to lighten up and put a quilt on my bed! And let the cat sleep on it!  

My friend, Mary, an avid and very skilled quilter whose number of stitches to the inch were perfect and uniform, recently sent me a quote and I love it:

No-one has EVER crawled under a quilt and said, "These Points Don't Match!"

Methinks Mary has seen the light too?