Quiltie's Revenge

Quiltie is coming along.






Those nice, straight quilted lines are brought to you courtesy of my aching back and three or four hours of careful measuring and marking of the quilt top.

Let me be clear: it took three or four hours (maybe more now that I think about it) of being on my hands and knees on my living room floor, hunched over a big ruler and a queen-sized quilt, measuring and drawing parallel and perpendicular lines, and feeling quite a bit of discomfort. (Though the pain might've been entirely caused by the 73 episodes of Last Comic Standing that were on the TV in the background. Man, that shit was bad.)

Non-quilters note: before you can start quilting/stitching this design, those concentric squares have to be measured and drawn on. Otherwise, there's no way to know where to stitch. (Sorry if that was straight from the Duh Files, but I'd rather insult your intelligence than leave somebody out. That way everyone wins. Some feel smart. Others feel included. Winners, all!)

I used a white Clover Chacopel Fine Pencil to mark the darker fabrics, and I used a plain ole mechanical pencil to draw my lines on the off-white fabric. The white pencil was real grabby with the fabric, so it wasn't the soothing experience I was hoping for. And drawing with a pencil-pencil on my light-colored fabric felt like it was making the quilt dirty. But, I forged ahead with great care. Great care. And my lines looked awesome.

Did I mention I did all this marking about four months ago?

(This is the part where expert quilters and all you other smarties sit back, take a sip of coffee, and quietly say, "Heh, heh. I see where this is going.")

(Go ahead. Sip your coffee. I'll wait.)

So, I picked Quiltie up this weekend to do a little quilting, la la la, and...




Quiltie -- that scheming, bitter mutherfucker -- ate my markings. The white pencil. The pencil-pencil. All of it.

I should've seen it coming. The signs were right there: his rage, his stomach pains, the history of mistreatment. But, I didn't. He was just right here, under my nose, with the best seat in the house, undermining my painstaking work.

Serves me right. Despite my apologies, I've been a little bitch to Quiltie. I know what I did.

So, I'm considering using a different pen for the re-markings, maybe the Dritz Disappearing Ink Marking Pen. But, I'll have to just do it one square at a time. Otherwise, I'm sure Quiltie will continue to devour it. And then no one wins. Just no one.

I wish I'd known quilting was such a vengeful hobby. I would've come prepared.