Where There's a Will...

Finding ourselves greatly in need of some family getaway time (...that all elusive quality bonding I'm always in search of...) we decided to haul the kiddos up to Tahoe for some R&R over Memorial Day weekend.  We had a lot of fun and laughs together, and it felt so good to be away from all the pressing deadlines and to-do lists that normal life consists of.

One of the projects I wanted to complete while there was sorting and organizing my quilting fabric stash.  My quilting studio is a favorite room of mine: gorgeous views and pure creativity.  The girls helped me to sort all of my scraps by color (and wow! were there a lot of scraps to sort!) and then I also sorted my larger pieces.  A book I recently bought (Sunday Morning Quilts - great book!) helped me envision how useful it would be to have it all sorted by color.  The idea is that someday I'll be able to take advantage of this...maybe this summer?

Lots of pink left over from having little girls
once upon a time...otherwise a nice
assortment, don't you think?

Anyhow, as I was sorting through and organizing all my fabric, I came across a collection of fabrics that centered around a Fishing theme.  Odd.  None of us fish.  I must have bought the collection when I made my dad a quilt years back?  My first thought was When on Earth am I going to use this?? and my second thought recalled how much Melinda always remarks on how much her 6th grade teachers Loves Fishing (with a capital F. Or, um, a capital L?  Let's do both.)  I decided to show Melinda the fabrics just for kicks.

It took her about 2 seconds to come to the conclusion that a fishy quilt would be the absolute perfect gift for her teacher, to thank him for being such a wonderful part of her first year at a large school.  That was about 10pm (a.k.a. past her bedtime) on Saturday night.  She wanted to give it to him as soon as she went back to school on Tuesday.

Nevermind the fact that she had never made a quilt before.  Nevermind the fact that quiltmaking can be a tedious, patience-building process, even for the patient type of person.  Nevermind the fact that we had exactly a day and a half to complete it.  This girl has GOALS.  Big Dreams.

She set to work [as soon as I woke up] the next morning.  We'd come up with a simple layout that would [hopefully] make the quilt process go quickly, and I'd done the math the night before to know how everything needed to be cut.  I did some of the instructing and grunt-work for her to speed it up, but she made the decisions, did all the sewing as well as most of the pressing and trimming.  She worked for about 9 hours straight!  She even jumped back into it after we got back from dinner, and ended the night with only a couple of seams left to sew on the quilt top.

So went our Sunday.  Sure, there were a ton of other ways I would have loved to spend my lovely Tahoe time, but how could I not support such generosity and tenacity?  She even did some of my chores for me on Monday morning so that I could quilt her finished top on my longarm machine.  She prepared the binding and sewed it on as soon as she was able when we got back to Long Beach last night.

She was so close to her goal when she collapsed into bed last night that I decided to sacrifice some of my coveted sleeping hours to finish the quilt by hand-sewing the binding to the back of the quilt.  It was a crazy-quick quilting adventure, that's for certain sure, but what a treat to be a part of such a huge accomplishment in my 11-year-old's life!

Didn't she do an incredible job?  I'm so extremely proud of her.