Who Drives?

The temperature was really high, and the humidity that accompanied it was like walking through a steamy shower room.  Shopping in that kind of weather is brutal here where we live.  There is no shade, and in the mid-summer most stores keep the temperature inside a bit higher than one might like, because of the possible brownouts.

After shopping most of the day, BFF and I got back to my house exhausted, glad to be out of the Southeast Texas heat and into air conditioning.  Bless those who invented that!  We got ourselves big glasses of sweet iced tea and vowed to stop heading out like mad dogs and Englishmen into the heat to go after things we likely could do without.

Then we went into my sewing room to look at our treasures.  I carefully pulled out all my blues and whites and sorted them into piles according to intensity of color, while my BFF looked through one of the quilting books I bought and read aloud selections of interest to us both.

By the time I finished, BFF was looking over the piles of fabrics arranged all over the floor.  “Wow.  You really have a great selection there.  Do you think you finally have enough of the deep blues?”

Bits of blue and white

I chewed my lower lip thoughtfully and said, “It’s possible.  Look at this pile. Remember when we got that one with the tiny stars on it?  It was the day we had lunch at that pizza place and that lady dumped the glass of iced tea all over her boss.”  We both laughed at the memory.

“Oh, and, how about that one with the cabbage roses?” BFF grinned.  “Remember the shop keeper?  She went running to the phone to hear about her granddaughter’s labor in Italy.”  We looked at each other and, at the same time, we called out, “It’s a boy!  I’m a great-grandmother!”  We laughed again, remembering.

She went back to her book, and I separated a couple of the piles into smaller, more carefully sorted shades of blue and said, “Dang, it was hot today.  Whatever made us think we could keep this up at our age?”  I said, shaking my head.

“Dunno,” BFF muttered in agreement.  “We have no brains at all.  The only thing inside our skulls in batting.”

“And old episodes of General Hospital,” I added.  “We need to be better at this,” I resolved.  “We should seriously shop in the fall and winter when everything is on sale and get enough stuff to use all through the hot season.”

“True.  That gives us 3 months of shopping and 9 months of quilting.  That should work,” BFF mused.

“A good balance.”  I nodded my head.

“A very good balance.  We can do this.  It will take planning, and there will be the times that we’ll need to go out for some small things,” BFF warned.

“Yes, but no more running around in the middle of the day in the blistering heat and humidity like we are young and bulletproof,” I admonished.

“Agreed.”  BFF nodded firmly.  “Having a plan is good.”  She turned back to her book and I looked at the sorted piles sitting around me on the floor.

“I don’t believe it,” I said, after a few moments of scanning my stash.

“What?” BFF asked, thumbing through some color plates in the book she was reading.  “Do you have enough deep blues at last?”

“Oh, yes,” I answered.  “I think I have enough for this project and at least three others.  But, there’s a problem.”

“Which is what?” BFF looked up from her book.

“I think I need more whites.”  We both looked at the fabric on the floor and then at each other.  Neither of us spoke aloud, but we both knew what we were thinking.

BFF grinned.  “Well,” she said, finally.  “Do I pick you up tomorrow, or do you wanna drive?”

Confessions of a Quiltaholic

Truth is, I don’t just love making quilts, I love hanging out with `em. I am a sucker for a quilt at a garage sale (yard sale, estate sale, tag sale, etc.), too. Just bought one this past weekend for $10. There are some worn spots on it, but it is lovely.

Now, this love of quilting may actually be an outgrowth of my love of sewing and of fabric. Or, it may be that the reason I love fabric so much is because I love seeing how it goes together in a quilt. Well, which came first: the chicken or the egg? No matter; I love it all.

The problem in loving this stuff so much is a problem of acquisition. And, by that, I’m not saying that it is hard to buy it – I’m saying it is hard not to buy it! Any of you have the same problem? In all honesty, can you walk into a quilting shop and not walk out with at least one fat quarter, or a yard or 2 of that new rose-patterned, cream-colored fabric over there on the shelf on the left, or that gorgeous cobalt blue with the tiny constellations all over it, or that cute, cute piece with the flying pigs or. . . Sigh!. . . Okay.  All of it, please!

See my dilemma?

Or, my favorite cohort-in-crime for the last 30 years and I are walking through the gorgeous rows of resale shops looking for pretty, old, china cake plates, which I also collect, and I suddenly catch my cohort-in-crime by her arm and:

Me: “Oh. My. Gosh! Can you believe that quilt over there on that bed frame? Did you see those beautiful feedsack prints in the butterfly pattern on it? I’ll bet it’s way out of my range. I’ll just ask, though.”

Cohort-in-crime: “Another one? You can’t own every old quilt you come across. You need to leave some of them for me.”

Me: “I saw it first. So, I’ll just ask the price. It’s bound to be too much. Neither of us will get it.” To shop owner: “How much? What?! Seriously?! Forty-five dollars?! Sold.”

Cohort-in-crime: “Well, I get the next one, no matter what. And, I thought you said you were not going to spend over $30 on any one item.”

Me: (smugly, with the subject quilt draped over my arm) “I lied.”

(Hmmm. My cohort-in-crime has never been really good at helping me fight my addictions, actually. Which is why we have always been such good friends, of course!)

Still, this adds to my stash, and, after quilting for around 30 years, and teaching quilting for about 20 of those years, I have acquired an awful lot of fabric and quilted goodies. I’m afraid I may be getting to the point that I need to part with some of it.

Nah.

I just need to rearrange everything to make more room, right?