"Chahmed, Ahm Shuh."

This is a picture of my "Charmed, I'm sure," quilt. My Honey was working late, last night, and I was trying to find something quiet and constructive to do at 2:30am. So I filed away some old pictures that I had found on cd's. This quilt is a snow ball pattern, but with alternate-color corner triangles. I think it gives it a little more interest. The fabrics are all vintage and 80% of them were in a friend's grandmother's stash. Just bits and pieces. So I added some of my own and came up with this quilt. There were a few lone blocks in the bag of scraps, so I just sewed them into the backing, before I quilted it. She was very pleased with her gift "from Grandma."

I just absolutely love and adore old vintage fabrics. The colors are so happy and the patterns are often witty and wild. I get all sentimental and mushy just looking at them. Sarah gave me a big pile of old stuff that her Grandma had aquired over the years at auctions and estate sales. She had worked with some of them- with wonderful results, but then she declared that, "Life is too short to make ugly quilts!" And I see her point. With all the quilts that we want to make in our lifetime, it might leave us in a pinch to just work with all the hand-me-down fabrics that come our way. And it can be les than inspiring to work with fabric that isn't to your taste. But on the other hand... You knew that was coming, didn't you? There is something very liberating about cutting into fabric that didn't cost you $9 a yard. Ahh... no pressure. If you mess up, no screams reverberating through the sewing room. Just an, "Oh well," shrug the shoulders and move on. And it is a challenge I enjoy to make something, if not beautiful, at least appealing from aqua and orange Taj Mahal fabric. (I'll show that one, sometime.) And if I don't like the end results, that's ok, too. Since the fabric is obviously old, folks automatically assume some poor, distant relative made the quilt 50 years ago- how could they be critical of that really, really ugly mottled puke green and burgundy fabric that they made it from? It was probably the best they could do...(I'll show that one sometime, too.) So, again, I'm off the hook.