Quilts – Page 161 – OccasionalPiece

I’m headed off to give my class their final exam. It’s the last day of class, and we’ll meet once more at their final exam time so the students can see their exams, check their grades. The trend has been to give the finals early–apparently it’s happening in all their classes. I don’t know why the math teachers do it, after all they have scantrons, but the Englishy types give the exams earlier because there’s just so much to correct and grade. Stacks and stacks. Reams and reams. Tons of stuff.

Last Sunday I pieced 4 blocks for my friend’s humanitarian quilt project. I cut out 3 1/2″ squares of green fabric, layered two together and stitched two diagonal lines, 1/2″ apart. I cut the square apart between the stitched lines making what’s known in the trade as “half-square triangles.” Here are the squares above.

But I was left with lots of 3 1/2″ squares and I was DONE making triangles. So I started sewing them together, putting a white square in the middle, in hopes of making a new twin-sized quilt for the guest bedroom (we already have one twin-sized quilt–just need another). See below for diagram. My inspiration was the bright pink and orange quilt that I made last summer.

After I grade my stacks and stacks and reams and reams, I’ll get back to this. A nice little respite from the labor-intensive Christmas Star quilt I’ve been working on.

Several years ago my husband and I took a year’s sabbatical to live in Alexandria, Virginia, while he worked at the Dept. of State. While he worked, I tried to revise my grad school novel (pitiful thing), visited museums, walked all the sights that D.C. has to offer, gazed at the monuments and joined a quilt group.

Mount Vernon Quilters became the place for me every Tuesday afternoon. The Bees, where we’d meet and just quilt–always hand piecing or applique–were alternated with our Business Meetings. We were one of eleven chapters of a much larger guild, Quilters Unlimited of Virginia, a group totaling around one thousand members.

However, our chapter was small, and I’d say the average age was retirement, with a few young quilters around the edges. I grew to love them and their interesting meeting snacks and amazingly, they took me in and loved me too. It was very hard to leave that little nest. So, in a way, I didn’t. I agreed to serve as Newsletter Editor–but from California–land of the fruits and nuts and machine piecers. Blogs were just starting to come on line at that time, and I set one up for the ladies of Mt. Vernon. It was completely radical–something they really liked–and we became known for our “with-it-ness” all around our greater Quilters Unlimited Guild.

After two years, Beverly took over. I’d never met her–she joined after I had gone–but I taught her everything I knew about blogging. She caught on quickly, asking her son for help when she couldn’t figure out long-distance what the heck I meant about copy-paste, or control-C-control-V. She made it her own. When I went back for a visit last year, I met her and her disabled daughter Catherine. Beverly was as sweet in person as she was on the phone.

Catherine died last week, in her sleep.

Her mother had tucked her in under a flannel chenille quilt made by one of the Mt. Vernon quilters, a slight breeze coming in from the window–and turned out the light. But in the morning, Catherine was gone. I wrote to Beverly to express my condolences and she wrote back:

It was so unexpected. Catherine seemed to be thriving–I really thought she’d outlive me. She was a happy young lady that made me smile everyday and never disappointed me. She was totally innocent–I called her the “barometer of good.” It will be so difficult as I have wrapped my life around her… it’s going to be quite an adjustment. Cath asked for nothing but love, and she got plenty.

So, to help Beverly out, I’ve picked up the blog for a while, trying to fill her shoes, and probably making a mess while I do it.

Life is pretty fragile. Perhaps we all need a quilt somewhere.