The Quilt Files, Episode 10

So what happens after you whip up a scrap log cabin for a surprise wedding? (Besides patting yourself on the back and thinking, "Wow, that came out better than I expected!") Well, as they say on the playground: first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the double-wide baby-carriage! That's right, twins!

Now, I suppose I should have been glad to hear they were coming ahead of time. This being pre-Facebook days, I often had to rely on family scuttlebutt for news coming from other states. This news was not always very timely, like the time I didn't find out my great-uncle had passed until we were discussing a family get-together three months later. (I'm told they weren't deliberately keeping it from me, they had just all assumed that someone else had given me the news.) So anyway, I found out about the twins before they were born: good thing.

And twins are exciting news, right? A girl and a boy, so one quilt in pink and one in blue. I was excited. I found a pattern I really liked and headed to my favorite fabric shop, where I found a group of pastel prints that all had hints of pink and blue and yellow. Then came the fun part: picking out different blues and pinks to make up the rest of the quilts. I also found the perfect backings: blue moons and stars for the boy quilt, raspberry and gold constellations for the girl quilt. Excellent. I got to work, appliqueing and embroidering the stars and moon, and piecing the rest together.

Then I made a visit to my grandmother. We were catching up on family news, and she said, "Oh, did you want to see a picture of your cousin's boys?"

"BOYS, did you say?" I replied, a bit confuzzled. "I thought it was a boy and a girl."

"Oh, they thought so too, but the second boy was being shy. On this ultrasound they saw two boys." I admired the copy of the ultrasound, all the while thinking, "is the fabric shop open when I get home?"

Whoops. Family scuttlebutt had been slow to arrive once again, and I had a pieced-but-not-quilted pink quilt that was beautiful but not suitable for a boy. Luckily, I had enough of the pastels to make another quilt. I rushed out to the fabric store (such a chore, I know) and secured enough different greens to make a suitable boy-twin quilt. And, as you can see, it came out looking very nice. I'm told the boys enjoy them so much they were suspicious when mom set them out to take photos for me. (That explains the leg in this photo.)

As for the pink quilt? Well, you'll have to wait until next month to see how that came out.