Random Acts of Kindness

Last February when I attended the Quilt Retreat at Ruby's Inn, my name got drawn in a raffle. I won three nice pieces of fabric to make a quilt. My niece, who is a fabulous quilter, has gone to the retreat for years, and the only thing she has ever won was some lame gift like plastic sheet protectors to store patterns in. She was so hoping to win a "good" prize this year. Our family rule is that if you want to come to the retreat next year you have to finish all your projects from this year. I do want to go to the retreat next year, so I knew I needed to be a little careful about how many projects I committed to finish. I decided that I could make two people happy by giving her the fabric and not bringing home another project for me to worry about. After she had packed her suitcase I slipped the fabric inside. I was feeling pretty proud about the "random act of kindness" I'd just done for Sharon. A few weeks later I get a box in the mail. She didn't just send the fabric back. She pieced it together for me!! Now that is kindness!

There are two great times to quilt. One is in January when it is so cold and miserable you're just happy to have an excuse to stay in and sew. The other is in July when it is so hot and humid you say to yourself, "Weed and die, or sit in an air-conditioned house and watch movies as you quilt? (Actually, it's more like "listening" to movies. You can't really watch, but I like to put on old movies that I've seen many times and I can listen and visualize in my mind what is going on) It's a pretty easy decision.

So, the quilt has surfaced. I'm putting the back together, and as soon as our company leaves next week I'll be ready to put up the quilting frames.