Sharing

My four-year-old grandson wanted to see some of my quilts during a visit last week, which I took as quite a compliment since often, if it doesn't have wheels attached to it somewhere, he doesn't stay interested for long.  And we spent a while looking at a few of the quilts I had with me and talking about what the primarily abstract pieces looked like or what he liked about them. He finally looked up at me and quietly said, "I want to make a quilt." And, of course, I did not let this opportunity slip by.

I showed him my drawer full of novelty prints and he was thinking about using a leopard print or a bear print until--he saw the construction vehicles. I suggested he might want to use some other color or pattern and he immediately said, "I want brown for dirt." So he chose five vehicles, I drew a square around each, and he cut them out with scissors. Now my vision for the layout was something resembling a nine patch, but the designer had another idea.  He liked a horizontal arrangement with the brown patches underneath (where the dirt belongs, of course). So I sewed them up, sandwiched them (there are frogs on the back), and we discussed quilting. He wanted minimal quilting around the vehicles, but then he suggested we could do tire tracks in red thread in the dirt.  So he sat on my lap and sewed the first tire track (he was doing a wonderful job making a straight line and I suggested he might want to make it meander a bit) and I echoed it for the second track. 

No hand-dyes, hand stitching or embellishments on this quilt, but still a very satisfying project.

And if you are still reading, thanks for the company!