Quilted with love

The is something cathartic, for me, anyway, about being a crafter, when life blows up and words are nothing more than cold comfort. When emotion chokes me up and there is nothing to say, and tears wont help anyone, there is solace in being busy, in the repetitive rhythm of cutting and pressing and stitching and DOING. A very small doing, in the scheme of things, but at least it is something more than nothing.

This is my third such quilt. Each and every one breaks my heart and is imbued with tears and love and prayer in each stitch, but my heart ached with this one, made to create a matching pair for a pair I hold so dear. On Instagram, I have been hashtagging it #CIAFAquiltvolume3 – I have no words for the knowledge that I have made enough to justify naming the series of cancer quilts I have made. It was designed very deliberately to be the same as the first quilt in the series that I made, in a day, way back in 2009. Upon delivery, I explained it was a big old barefoot family hug quilt, the backing and a good chunk of the front being made from fabric I used to make my three wee boys some pants for a family function, and the navy was a voile I had purchased to make myself a shirt.

The voile was a pain in the butt to work with, being so slippery, but I think aside from one corner, I got it mostly square. All the fabrics and batting came from stash, and it only took a week or so to pull it all together.

I must confess there was a moment I was cursing the sewing machine, and swearing I would never tell my husband but the machine I spent five years nagging asking for didn’t quilt nearly as well as my old machine. Yeah no, it quilts fine, if you click the walking foot into place properly. Le sigh.

The quilt was duly delivered to it’s new owner last weekend and was received with much love, and so it has already served it’s purpose, even as it continues to work it’s magic during recovery. I kept me busy and out of my own head, and it has taken our love with it, in a little white car, 7 hours down the highway, to wrap a dear man in a hug until we can have him back with us and on the road to recovery.