A hilarious article repost, and my thoughts.

So I adore Tonya's Lazy Gal Quilting blog; it was actually one of the first blogs I started reading regularly, and was the first I followed if memory serves. Her quilts, while not necessarily my style or thing, are always interesting and quirky in their own right even if they tend to eschew the traditional quilting style. Bottom line, I love her. And Pokey. Pokey has made me aspire to someday adopt a Siamese or Snowshoe mix, she's just that beautiful.



Anyways, so Tonya posted this article on her blog, and I think it rather fittingly describes the monstrosity that has taken over my life and the gradual progression of the insanity. Except in this case it is a cross-family contamination, to the point where my sister began making noises about wanting to get into quilting or sewing if I would show her. Although to be fair it was playing off a previous infection in the household since my mother once made a quilt thanks to my grandmother getting her into it.

I think quilting is probably the least harmful "obsession infection" one could contract. Unlike, say, the video game menace that I started after playing Pokemon Red on a friend's GameBoy at the karate center, or the chocolate plague that my father initiated before that by giving my sister a chocolate bar, quilting has something material to show at the end of the day, something that can be handed down to family after family, loved, used, re-purposed, and donated or torn apart for rags (eek) if needed at the end of the quilt's life.

There is the added benefit of keeping a tradition alive. While my thoughts on the lamentable fate of the courageous quilter maintaining a lost and forgotten art have been aired before--read, get over yourself and get back to quilting ya lazy bum--the simple truth of the matter is that quilting is no longer as important a skill, if it is even assigned any importance to the common man.

Yet quilters are maintaining a sort of oral tradition in their stitches; does anyone know how old the Four Square block is? How about the Pinwheel? These blocks, simple as they are, hold generations of knowledge in their corners, knowledge that has been passed from quilter to quilter in the same basic format to this very day. I would liken them to fairy tales, with the myriad variations on the simplest of blocks arising from the more creative types and their clever fingers deciding to experiment one winter's evening.

One line from the article rang a little too true for me, concerning the author's mother and her predisposition for giving quilts as gifts.

Glenn's Christmas present.

... Moving on.

Perhaps I will end up like the author's mother--managing a quilt shop of my own, or at least working in one doing what I love for a living. Perhaps I will be successful in continuing the infection with my sister and mother, and create my own dynasty of quilters who will bow down to me as the original quilter in the line, stretching back to New Jersey and the Smiths, and beyond that.

Can't say that's too awful of a fate. :)

See you soon!