In 2011, when I lived at the cottage on Sand Lake,  I started reading up on patchwork and cutting up blocks of cloth to make a queen-sized quilt for my bed. Ever since, usually over the winter months, I put in a few hours here and there stitching it together. It’s made from honest-to-goodness scraps made by my adorable pets: non-reparable, almost-unforgivable holes in various sheets sets and a duvet cover. There was nothing to do but quilt them. Though I did make a hot plate pad out of turning scrappy cloth into “yarn” and then knitting it. That was hard on my hands – the knitting was tougher work than with wool.

So I turned the scraps into a pattern and stitched it all together. As soon as I had the top layer and found a bottom piece to match, I ordered a wool batt from Cedarview Farms in southwestern Ontario. I’ve “bagged” it, though it won’t be a complete bag where all seams are sewn, like a duvet or sleeping bag; instead I might need to create borders on two sides. As my theme is a windmill, I’ll use the border called “Flying Geese.”

I’m getting ready to start quilting it. This is where the handy book The Quilting Bible (3rd edition), and a website called Quilting Made Easy, come in handy. I have a quilting wheel I inherited from my grandmother, which I can use to perforate the copies of the stitching patterns I’ll use. Then, one rubs coloured chalk into the pattern to transfer it to the area for stitching.

Thanks to the help of the ladies in the Westmount Quilter’s Guild, I’ve tacked the quilt. I’ve partly quilted it too, along the seams, and as soon as that’s done, I will finally be able to quilt it by machine. I’m looking for a long-arm sewing machine, because it’s going to be hard to feed a queen-sized quilt through any other kind.

I’ll show pictures when I’ve made more progress. It’s been six years since I started it. The going is very, very slow.