Stormy
September 2021

I try not to have too many UFOs, but this one became an unfinished project last year, during the pandemic. With the rush on cotton fabric for making face masks, it became increasingly difficult to sometimes get fabric, let alone trying to find more of a specific fabric. I needed less than a 1/4 yard of one of the outlying darker blues, but could not find it anywhere. Even as the pressures on cotton fabric eased over the last several months, I still had no luck finding what was needed.

After sitting in a drawer for a year, I decided that a finished quilt was better than a perfect quilt, and substituted a dark solid blue fabric, seen in the top and bottom rows. The piece of past fabric in this quilt is the first band of the darker blue fabric. It was some that my sister gave me several years ago, previously a favored sundress of hers. I have used it in several quilts, and the dress is now whittled down to a just a few remaining small scraps. I made this as a quanket, finishing it with fleece backing.

It was a difficult decision for me to just ‘move on’. From the early designing phase I intended it to have that particular fabric in that particular spot. In reflection, I think this quilt is like life sometimes: we have a certain vision in our minds of how we think it’s going to go, but life throws us a curve ball, and we must decide to move on, or be stuck in a drawer. I chose the name Stormy as a reference to the turbulent year of 2020.

“…a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor”
~ President Franklin D. Roosevelt

This quanket was donated for a child in foster care in October, 2021.