Goodbye, Bad Child

Over a year ago, a good friend of mine asked me if I would make a quilt for her husband. Well, for both of them, but since her husband disliked their current bed covering, it was really for him. She, besides being a friend, is our tax accountant, and suggested we trade our services (I'll probably be claiming this exchange on my taxes this year). At the time, I really didn't give it a lot of thought. Big mistake. Big.

Late last winter we shopped for the fabric and I brought it home. And it's been like a really bad child ever since. Today I will stand at the end of the drive and wave goodbye to that quilt, like a mother waving goodbye to a grown child gone rotten, hoping it will stay away (fortunately, I don't really have one of those).

Like a mother and her child, the quilt and I started out sweetly. I lovingly washed and ironed that fabric, and carefully cut it into perfect little squares. Then, I ever so patiently stitched it together in perfectly planned patterns. And after all those hours of nurturing that quilt, like a troublesome teenager, it turned bad. Since it was a king size quilt, putting the entire thing together required the moving of furniture in my house, and much crawling around on the floored to carefully pin it together. Then the stitching, the pain staking stitching. Pulling that big enormous child through my machine, row after stinkin' row. And when I wasn't paying it any attention, it would nag at me from the dining room table, "work on me, work on me."

Finally finished, washed and dried, it sits sulking in the corner by my Christmas tree, waiting for a new mother to come and take it home.

Well, goodbye bad child, forever.

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