In my life, Q is for Quilting

Quilt making, actually the patchwork part, is kind of magical, almost like re-creating the brecciated designs in agates and jaspers. Quilting was how I thought I'd be spending most of the time after retirement, but rockhounding took over a large part of my time long before then. You see, I wanted to learn how to make the newer forms of jewelry that rockhounding threw into my path. So, we joined three Gem and Mineral clubs which promoted the sport, and the art, of collecting field trips and Lapidary. As a consequence, the time for quilting evaporated. Poof!

As aging rockhounds gave up the hobby, DH and I went to the backyard sales and gathered up their cast off equipment, rough and slabs of agates and jaspers, fancy small grained rocks like dumorturite and lapiz lazuli, anything that was colorful, hard, cutable and took a great polish. From this we are building a rock shop of our own. A corner of the garage for noisy saws and grinders.

Quilting sat languishing in drawers, totes and closets. I quit going to fabric sales over time. I quit making any clothing for DH or myself. I started filling up empty plastic restaurant tubs and kitty litter buckets with rocks and slabs from Quartzsite and Tucson, Summer rock shows of various clubs. Many rock shows later, and after collecting at least 1000 lbs of various rocks, I'm starting out again in quilting. It will all restart with the batik quilt for a grand niece. She's a real live doll, and she's been waiting far too long for her very own special quilt.