Quilters

The late Republican Senate Majority Leader Everett Dirksen of Illinois is quoted as commenting in a Senate floor debate on an appropriation measure over 30 years ago, "A million here, a million there--soon we're talking real money!"

So it is with quilting. The seams are a quarter inch, but with a mis-step here and a fudge there, pretty soon we are talking about some serious real estate. So in the interest of humility, here is some of the piecing I have done on the quilt I mentioned yesterday. Yes, there are some errors. I am a humble person. I suppose we could transfer the analogy to other aspects of our lives. The soufflé falls— a humility meal. Little Johnny gets expelled from school—our humility child.

Actually, I didn’t want to leave the subject of quilting without mentioning a splendid play. When my sister-in-law, Mary Ann, ran the box office at the College of Du Page (and employed, for a while, Sean Hayes, as in Will and Grace ), we often combined our visits to her with some great theater. Quilters made a great impression on me, and I am surprised that more theater groups don’t perform it. There is music involved, and it calls for an all-female cast. Basically it is a study of the history and function of quilts and quilters in the western expansion across the prairie. There are a collection of vignettes, and we see the quilt as a literal lifesaver during the freezing nights. We see quilts as community builders, and quilting parties as an acceptable way to socialize and pass on new ideas. Even a good way to meet guys (I was trying to find the music for “Seeing Nellie Home”, but the words will give you an idea of how the it all worked in 1912.)

There is one scene of a devastating fire and the efforts of the community to make quilts for the survivors. That happened after Hurricane Katrina too. Some things never change.