My dutiful dog
Chick was confused about why I would ask her to sit on her bed in the morning. But she's a dutiful girl and did as I asked. I cannot believe how much I love this flea bag! Jesus, she's so cute! Her ears are irresistibly soft and floppy.In our house we are dreadfully short of spare blankets. We have three ragged antique quilts that have become considerably more ragged from constant use by us. That's what quilts are actually for. For keeping you warm. For using. Now that quilts have enjoyed such an incredible renaissance and have effectively become an art form, it's not hard to forget that originally they were made predominantly from scraps and rags and they were not made to hang artfully on the wall or arranged on the arm of a sofa where it isn't actually supposed to be used.
Never the less, I feel I have committed a crime. There is no fixing these quilts. They are worn through with holes, they are eternally stained, and faded, and pretty much used up as though they were loved to death. Yes, they were heirlooms. No, they are not fit to pass on. I soothe my guilt by knowing that one of them was loved to death by Max. He won't be able to pass it on to his children, but since he frequently informs me of his intention to remain a bachelor for all his days just like Uncle Zeke, I don't think that's going to be an issue. What he did do was get to sleep with something his great great grandmother made out of necessity with great skill every single night for two years.
The reason this is all on my mind is that Chick, our dutiful black dog, sleeps on a bean bag cushion covered in vinyl. Not very cozy. I have been covering it with one of the worn out old quilts because she likes to paw at the cushion to get comfy and I don't want her to rip the bean bag open. Not only that, vinyl is pretty un-cozy. However, I loathed letting her further destroy my shredding quilt. I don't seem able to find time to make some quilts, not even fast ones and when guests come over we don't have anything good to cover them with. So I bought some short pile fake fur a while ago to cover the bean bag with.
Yesterday I managed to whip it together. Seriously a slap-dash affair, I made it at work without benefit of eyeballing the bean bag while I worked. I had a vague measurement to work with. It took almost no time at all. And now she has something cozy to sleep on, my sad quilt is rescued from her dirt and fur, and I got the supreme satisfaction of getting a project done that has nothing to do with my store.
Now what I'm thinking is that I need to cut out a bunch of large squares to hand piece a quilt together. The only quilts I've made before were three crib quilts for other people's babies. I hand pieced the first two and machine pieced the last one. I hand quilted all of them. I love hand stitching and since I spend every evening watching reruns of Frasier or Friends, it would be easy enough to stitch large squares together. I could then tie it off instead of quilting it. This would be simple, not something I'm going to compare to Pam Kitty Morning quilts or Michelle Sews quilts, but it would be something sturdy and pretty and warm. What more could I ask for? I want to have a cupboard full of quilts like Sarah at the Misadventures of Mama and Jack.Making blankets and quilts might seem like a hobby, or an art, until you don't have enough of them in your house. Suddenly they become very important. I don't know how we got to this point in our household. It seems there used to be a time when we had lots of blankets to go around. But I've got to get all pioneer woman on my own ass and fix this problem.
Because I really don't have enough to do already.
