My first quilt has a sorta funny story.
Many women in my family are incredible seamstresses but none quilt.
My then boyfriend and I were out looking at garage sales on a Sunday morning. We followed the signs to one and started looking around. I found a nice, simple twin-sized grandmother's fan done in blue and whites and hand-quilted in somewhat large, loose stitches. It has a poly-cotton sheet backing brought round to the front. Nothing extraordinary but still pretty.
I wasn't sure exactly who the other man at the sale was. He was the only one there but he looked like he was going through the things for sale too. He wasn't the cleanest person I've ever seen. He noticed me looking around and said somewhat spontaneously "Scott's upstairs, but I can sell that for him, do you want to buy it?" I said yes and readily agreed to buy it for the asking price of $5. He looked sorry he hadn't asked for more but continued to pick stuff up. As we were driving away we saw him loading "his" things into his shopping cart. The man was homeless. He'd found these garage sale items left out overnight and must have pocketed my $5.
I felt guilty about that for a while but then I realized whoever was selling this stuff didn't care much about it if he couldn't be bothered to bring it in overnight. The quilt is in far better care in my hands and the homeless guy probably needed my $5. So I think everything turned out for the best.
The amusing thing in all of this is that I gave this quilt to my current boyfriend and have given all the others I've made myself to various people. So I'm a stealth quilter at my home. It takes a quilter to know one. You'd see my stash of cottons organized by color and my rotary cutter and mat. Other than that there isn't a quilt in the place. And it may be blasphemy but I'm not sure I want one. Maybe it's only the mother of all quilts for me... Maybe I just haven't found *my* quilting voice.
-Charlotte