The Evolution of a Quilt

Way back a long time ago
when the eldest daughter
was still living in Flagstaff
and attending NAU
she was in the JoAnn's Fabric store one day,
saw a quilt book full of baby quilts
and decided she wanted to make one.
She chose her favorite quilt
called Rainbow Sherbet

and purchased the book,
a variety of colored fat quarters,
a fabric cutter,
a ruler and a cutting mat.
Then she wasn't quite sure
what to do next
so she put all her purchases
away for a while.

Still a long time ago
the daughter moved back home
and one boring summer day
she decided to get out her quilt making supplies
and see if she and I could figure out how to proceed.
We cut all the colored fat quarters
into little squares


with the help of the fabric cutter,
the ruler and the cutting mat.

Then following the pattern in the book
we put all the little squares
into their proper positions
on the floor and stepped back.
We both really hated what we saw.
The squares didn't seem to blend together nicely
like they did in the picture in the book.
They all seemed to be fighting with each other.
We decided perhaps if we found a nice fabric
to go around the edge
it would tie all the blocks together
and we would like it better
so off we went to the JoAnn's Fabric store
to purchase a rainbow print for the border.
We looked and looked and looked
and couldn't find anything that we liked
to finish the ugly quilt.
We came home with this instead.


We took the green squares from the original quilt
and added them to some new pink squares
and white print squares
and some larger frog squares.
We really liked this quilt a lot better!
We sewed and sewed and sewed
little squares together to make bigger squares
and then sewed and sewed and sewed
the squares together to make rows.
As we added squares to rows
we discovered that we were short
one dark green square
that we needed to finish the quilt.
One silly little square.
So we put the quilt away again for awhile.
For weeks and months and years
we searched every JoAnn's Fabric store we visited
in Arizona,
in California,
in Utah,
for a green fat quarter that matched
the missing piece.

Fast forward to today.
The daughter is actually expecting a baby,
is on Spring Break,
and feeling crafty.
We pull the quilt out of the closet
once again.
We look at it and decide if we rearrange
a few squares here and there
we don't need that one little square of green fabric.
We unpick,
we rearrange,
we sew,


we unpick,
we rearrange,
we sew.


We even do some ironing in there
and TA-DAH...


We have a quilt top all sewn together
and it only took 5 years.