Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

The letter and the spirit of the law - or I should pay better attention!

On Sunday JoAnn and I had this one-way (notice how I say one-say, which should give you a clue as to how it went) conversation about cleaning up her sewing room. It was getting to where you could hardly get in the room and it had been weeks and weeks since she last sewed in the room. Of course she was working on Mike & Allison's quilt and that did require more space, but while she was off doing that the material seemed to breed and multiply on her desk. So I put my foot down and said, I want that room clean. Yes, it hurt when I put my foot down.

I got home after a late class yesterday and walked by her sewing room and it was "beautifully clean." I was so impressed. I went into the living room to tell her so. She was busy at the dining room table cutting out material for her next projects (note that there is more than one project). I really wanted to let her know just how wonderful and clean and organized the room looked. And it did and does. She was gracious in receiving my appreciation, even though I probably should have been skewered for suggesting she do something when she has been so busy. So she met the spirit and letter of the request (not the law as I published in the title.

I'm really impressed. It's clean and ready to go. I hope I don't have to make my desk look this good.

I really didn't pay much attention to the rest of the living room until we got ready to sit down to a bowl of soup and as I looked around me, there were piles of material everywhere (maybe a slight over exaggeration). My first comment was, "So, we moved the material from the sewing room to here?" She quickly responded with a spirited, "Well yes, the room is clean, isn't it?" I was boxed, what could I say. So much for the spirit of cleaning - or at least that was what I thought. I could not have been more wrong. Oh, I was right about the material hanging around the living room couch, but wrong about why.

Later she shared with me all of the piles individually and intimately explaining how each was a project and what it would look like when completed. It took all my patience to get through this. She unfolded item after item and showed it to me. The whole time I'm telling myself, I don't need to see the whole thing, and finally I said that (I know, dumb idea). To which JoAnn responded, "I want to see it again, it's so beautiful." I was trapped, but also aware I had judged too soon. I wasn't looking at random piles of material located on the couch to avoid storing them. No, I was looking a multiple projects, all carefully thought out and organized. I know there is a lesson in there for me and someday I will have to ponder it out. For now I'm just happy I was wrong.

It looks pretty ugly, but I thought I took 2 photos. No just one and I could tell you it looks like this so you wouldn't know what they are - but you know me too well.

Some of my favorite quilts

One thing about being married to a quilter is that it seems there is never enough time to get all of the quilts done and never enough material. Okay, there may be enough material, but I've yet to meet a quilter who believed that. The nice thing about being married to a quilter is that I get to see all of her work. And in truth, all of her quilts are my favorite, but I have some that carry a little more weight. We missed taking photos of some of JoAnn's early quilts. As we have gone to visit family we take photos of the missed quilts when we realize we don't have a photo. It goes in our flickr collection. In fact, as I was searching through our photos I realized one of our favorite quilts - at least one of was not present. Thank goodness it's one of the few we kept. We have had it hanging up for years.

I can't possible, in a single post, share all of the quilts that carry a little more meaning, so I will spread these posts out over the next several weeks/months. We shall see.

The variety of quilts is almost daunting. The above right quilt was made for our oldest daughter and is a departure from what JoAnn usually does. It took a long time and a lot of debate over colors, layout and the like. I'm amazed at how much learning goes each and every quilt.


The quilt shown above was the one I alluded to earlier. It is one of her first and remains one of my favorite quilts. I love the colors, the bees, the flowers, and the little quilting pin on the lower right hand corner. The quilt below is my personal favorite because she did it for me. It hangs right above my corner desk in our bedroom where I can look up at it frequently.


Finally, at least with this post I finish with another piece that JoAnn just completed for our youngest daughter, now living in New Mexico. When we went to visit this summer we took time to do a little quilt material shopping. That means I dropped JoAnn off and went looking for a Dairy Queen. No luck with the Dairy Queen, but you can see from the quilt below she found some great material. I love the way the colors go together.


Please note that there are no grandchildren quilts in this selection. That will be in a later "Quilting Grandma" blog.