A quilt for a snowy evening!

Well, campers, we have finally dug ourselves out of the big blizzard, just in time for a predicted 8 - 10 inches tomorrow. The official total for this weekend was 27 inches. Yowser! You could lose a child or small dog in the piles of snow around here!

I was at the grocery store tonight and things are getting thin on the shelves. The dairy products are running out (no skinny moo - had to buy 1%) and the produce was decimated. We have had no mail service for two days (Saturday and Monday) and the trash and recycle pick up for this week was cancelled. But we will survive. My question is where will we put the additional snow that is showing up tomorrow?

I thought I would reach back into the quilting archives to show you one of my finished quilts from 2007, in honor of all this white stuff. I was the Executive Director of the Ligonier Valley Historical Society and Compass Inn Museum for three years 2005-2008, and we had a holiday event each year called THE FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS. Being a very involved kind of person (and maybe a bit of an idiot to give my time and talent away), I donated a handmade quilt each of the three years to be raffled off as a fundraiser on the opening night of the 10 day event. This is the quilt for holiday 2007, the last year I was there and it has a very interesting story. I will post the other two quilts in future entries.

This quilt is about 50 inches square with a variety of textures in the patches from satin to corduroy. The center cross stitch is on black Aida cloth, stitched in white and silver with just a touch of red. The borders around the center motif are white Aida cloth with snowflakes and holiday greeting in silver and red metallic floss. The name of the organization, the event and the date is across the bottom. Silver snowflakes are cross stitched onto black Aida cloth in the body of the quilt and the back is thick Christmas red corduroy with white snowflakes. It was the 25th anniversary of the event, hence the heavy use of silver.

So here is the story. As we had done the previous two years, my daughter Becky did the cross stitching and I made the quilt for the raffle. Each quilt had the historical society's name on it and the year. They were becoming collector's items. I finished the quilt in plenty of time for the November 30th opening night event and bids were brisk. The event is a cocktail and appetizer kind of thing with people, shall we say, enjoying their libations. At the end of the evening, I went to put the quilt away and discovered someone had spilled red wine on the upper border. I immediately freaked, rushed to the ladies room with the quilt and attempted a rescue but alas, it was too late. The stain had set. We tried oxyclean, dry cleaning, seltzer water (not necessarily in that order) but nothing worked. I pulled the quilt from the auction as it was no longer pristine. Needless to say, I was heartsick and very, very angry at someone's carelessness or stupidity.

Here is the interesting part. My leadership at the historical society was coming to an end and there were many people who were not happy with me. I have always wondered if the quilt was vandalized. I will never know for sure so I guess it really isn't worth spending too much time on that question. When anyone asked about the quilt over the 10 day event period, I informed them it was ruined and I had taken it back. One woman continued bidding on it even after it was removed and was so surprised when she was informed it was not available. It turned out she had been bidding on another item and only thought she was bidding on the quilt!

What to do with a damaged yet still lovely quilt over which one has slaved many hours? I gave the quilt to Becky as a reward for all her hard work, a beautiful quilt with a slightly pink border across the top. But as I said before, every quilt has a story!