Quilting For the First Time in Over Three Years

 

My beloved cat, Smokey, is making it difficult for me to work on my stitching, and he is confused because I keep shooing him off of my project. He sees it as a comfy quilt to nap on. I see it as a quilt in desperate need of repair.

I made my first quilt 50 years ago and apparently I knew nothing about choosing quality fabrics to work with. Unfortunately the fabric I chose for sashing in this quilt has reached its expiration date.

You can see damage above in the sashing. I decided to cover that damage with some orphan hexagon blocks that were made for potential use in another quilt. I have many of those blocks left. In fact, I could probably cover all of the sashing pieces in the quilt if I wanted to. 

I started by covering the worst damage that had occurred in the sashing near the top of the quilt. I attribute this damage to jagged fingernails grasping to pull up covers. My husband has been chastised. 

The blocks at the top of the quilt still show damage and will probably be covered in some manner. I'm thinking of using one of my orphan hexagon block with additional gold fabric pieces connected to them to totally cover the white square of the block. I have to give this some thought.

What I will end up with is a quilt that still has enough of its original design to remind me of my first quilt, but it will also have elements from some of my most recent work. 

I see this quilt as a metaphor for my aging body as my life draws to its inevitable end. If you are under 50 years old you might not appreciate this. If you as old as I am you probably will appreciate it.

The above photo shows the two damaged blocks in context.

The original quilt is kind of like a Baltimore quilt.

I used to have a blog devoted to quilting, and I am actually still paying for it even though I have not used it in about three years. I've got to let it go. Quilting is not my life anyone. I just want to patch my earlier quilt and finish off the quilts I started and never finished.

I'm going to start using my Go Blog for crafts content from now on. These posts might be few and far between.

If you are go player who stumbled on this post, don't worry. I won't be putting links to these posts up on Facebook in the Go Group. I'll simply link to them at the bottom of my weekly Go Activities Blog Posts.