Fixing and Repairing

“Being broken isn’t the worst thing. We can be mended and put together again. We don’t have to be ashamed of our past. We can embrace the history that gives us value, and see our cracks as beautiful.”
― Anna White, Mended: Thoughts on Life, Love, and Leaps of Faith

If you know quilters or have been around quilting much, you’ve heard horror stories about sending quilts off to quilt shows and some of the things that happen to your works of art in the process.  This story is a little different.  This summer I sent this quilt off to a quilt show on the East Coast.

It traveled to the show and back.  We had a trip planned before the quilts came back.  There was someone staying at the house while we were gone to house sit and dog sit.

Our cute little (?) dog, Frankie hasn’t shown the slightest interest in any of my quilts.  I have them over the backs of chairs and on a couple of quilt stands in her range.  She is part lab and part huskie.  We adopted her from a rescue center not quite a year ago and she has a delightful personality- – – most of the time!  Can you see where this is going?

I had warned the house sitter to be on the lookout for a package with my quilts in them.  They arrived, safe and sound, and were placed on the middle of the table, presumably out of reach of the dog.  They were left there while some other projects were completed.  Then the house sitter returned to find Frankie in the middle of the living room and a significant hole in one of the quilts.

When we returned home, the poor lady that was staying at the house was beside herself!  All the other quilts had been striped from chairs and quilt racks and put behind closed doors.  Fortunately, I don’t buy just enough fabric to finish a specific project, but wait for the fabric to speak to me or dance for me, so digging through scraps, I found enough to do a repair.

This is the after.   It probably is not show ready anymore, but repaired pretty well and now has a great story and memory to go with it!