Habitat Quilt Process

This charming story was sent to your editor and demonstrates how process can work in certain circumstances. Enjoy!

Once upon a time, a normally sane and productive quilter walked into a quilt shop and chose eight fabrics at random, while blindfolded.  She brought the fabrics home, sight unseen, and dumped them out on the table.  Lo and behold, there she found one gorgeous fabric (small dots on gray background), and... well... seven others. 

Seizing the opportunity to "help", her enthusiastic cat, Gizmo, promptly leapt up onto the table and barfed on one fabric, and left copious amounts of cat hair on several others.

Totally undaunted, the intrepid quilter set out to make a modern masterpiece.  "I will embrace my inner Wonky!", she declared, as she began to cut out pleasing wedges for her "organic" design.  Several hours later however, she realized that her wedges were more "Wacky" than "Wonky".

Not easily discouraged, she thought, "Never mind.  I can fix this.  I will change my design and add some solids, and it will be fine."  Thinking that the "overly bright" fabrics needed to be "diluted"  (like adding ice to a glass of scotch), she chose three of the palest solids she could find.  "This will help!", she said confidently, and "Yes! Why not have scotch over ice while I'm at it?"

So she poured herself a scotch on the rocks and proceeded to sew strips of pale solids between the wedges of misfortune to create strips of disaster.  "There!  That's better!", she thought, until she stepped back from her design board and realized that things were not moving in the right direction.  "Those strips are too wide!", she exclaimed.  It's too much ice!  I need to add scotch!" But alas, she had no more scotch -- I mean, fabric -- so all she could do was remove "ice".

Feeling much less energetic at this point, she decided not to rip out the strips of pale solids and cut them down.  Instead, she sewed a seam down each strip to narrow it. "No one will even notice.", she thought.

After she sewed the seams and stood back to admire her handiwork, she thought, "Ah! That's much better!  Now I have strips of wedges and solids, and all I need now is a some sashing.  What color should I use?"  She pulled a few candidates out of her stash and showed them to the dog.  "Why not let him choose?," she thought. "He has good taste."  She laid the fabrics on the floor, and without hesitation, he flopped down on his favorite.

"Baby poop brown it is!!  I could not have chosen better myself!"  And as luck would have it, that very color appeared in seven of the eight fabrics...all the fabrics except that lovely gray one with dots.

So she sewed in the sashing with renewed gusto, and was totally delighted with the result.  "Now I need the perfect name for my perfect quilt.  I know!," she said.  "I will call it 'Hangover'"




Thanks to Rhonda for her contributions!


~Jaye