Knots and Stitches

Our friend Ghislaine mailed us a startling quilt square, made of interwoven red and green plaid ribbons, edged in a flurry of white lace. Her note said, “Here’s a crazy psychedelic square to start a quilt for Shelley’s new baby.”

Lorrie surrounded this odd bright center square with star-printed blue satin, followed by a band of bright yellow.

Then Marie put on a red border printed with apples, oranges, grapes and bananas, and Christiane added a green border.

 I was excited by this giddy medallion with its wild exuberance and offbeat fabric. I sewed broad swaths of green and red plaid taffeta around the four sides of the medallion to echo the center ribbons, and sent the quilt top back to Crippen.

I was disappointed when I saw the quilt top again. Although it was still beautiful, its vitality had somehow been dulled by the blue brocade triangles sewn around it. The combined efforts of the Crippen women had been needed to attach the heavy blue brocade upholstery fabric, which crawled and slithered and stretched as it was being sewn to the lighter fabrics of the inner medallion. Marie, Lorrie, Ginger, and Carol each tried in turn to sew it down. Finally, as Marie explained, “We tackled it with intense basting and got it on. But then it looked boring.”

 But by the next time I saw it, the quilt shimmered with renewed glamour and verve. Lorrie and Marie had rescued it from boredom by stitching giant lightning-strike zig-zags of yellow and red on top of the troublesome blue brocade. “It was pure inspiration,” commented Marie, “we thought it needed something to jazz it up, to give it a Gypsy caravan feel.”

At an all-day quilting potluck, the women stitched comet-tails on the star fabric, outlined brocaded flowers with bright threads, circled apples and oranges with loop-the-loop stitches, and embroidered their initials on the back.

The finished quilt was sent back to Ghislaine, who had made the small center square of ribbons. She said, “It was really wonderful to see the transformation from beginning to end with totally different ideas and influences of all the people showing through. When I started it, I didn’t have a clue what was going to happen.”

Text is from Knots and Stitches--Chapter 16, Quilts of Sunshine and Shadow