Closet Quilter

by Jody Worsham
All rights reserved for Speed Quilting


When my creative writing hits a snag, I seek other creative endeavors for awhile. Usually I try to cook something but Dr. Hubby just replaced the batteries in the smoke alarms so that is not a good idea.


I am now quilting. This is supposed to be a subway tile type quilt. Mine looks more like an earth quake hit the tiles on the quilt. That is not entirely my fault.  I shall explain.

Our house has been "under construction" for the past 36 years.  The stairs have needed a railing for the past four years.  THE day I set up my quilting frame (four 2x2 boards balancing precariously on 4 folding chairs), battle the batting, fight the pieced quilt top, and wage war getting the bottom cover in place with everything pinned down, Dr. Hubby decides to hire a contractor to finish the stair case.  After moving the entire frame and having it fall from the folding chairs twice, the earthquake quilt  also looked like a tsunami was approaching the lower  half.  But I digress.


 My problem, one of many, is that I get a little bit of information, then run 90 miles an hour trying to get it done so I can see what it is going to look like.  This was my first pieced quilt.  Cutting cloth into rectangles then sewing them together seemed fairly easy.

To cut the rectangles, I got the self-healing cutting mat, the rotary cutters like the real quilting ladies said, but nobody told me to cut only two or three pieces at a time. I figured I would save time and cut about six or nine pieces at a time.

Unfortunately my cardboard template kept getting shaved a little bit by the rotary cutter every time I cut a chunk of material so that by the time I had cut 250 blocks... well let's just say my corners no longer had right angles.


I am really a closet quilter meaning my quilts should remain in the closet unless a sever blizzard is in the forecast.


I learned a long time ago to use a printed fabric for the bottom of my quilts to hide my stitches. This time I used fabric covered in stars. The neat thing is when the eight-year-old was playing under my makeshift quilting frame he said "Hey, Mama when I'm sleeping at night, now I'll be sleeping under the stars."

So my quilt will never be entered in a quilting show with members of the Quilters Guild and it will never win a blue ribbon, but maybe one day a grown man will say to his little boy "Want to sleep under the stars?"