SQUEEEEEEEEE!!!!

Can you remember the first time you tied your shoes?  Or successfully snapped your fingers?  Or whistled?  Or blew a bubble with your gum?  I remember the first time I opened and closed a safety pin.  It was an enigma to me - the way one side would press in but the other one wouldn't, the way you had to press in and then down just so and then pop! out would come the pin.  I was maybe six, and I sat on the gym floor with other kids while we all tried to figure out how to open a safety pin.  I kept working and working and then pop!  I gasped with glee - such success!

This week my 30-year-old self reconnected with that little kid, and I gasped - and squealed - with delight the moment I took the last pin out of my quilt.  Finished!  My first quilt!

I don't think I sewed a straight line on the thing, and I stuck myself about five thousand times with straight pins, but oh, I am so in love.  I adore it.  I smile every time I look at it.

And - is it okay to say this? - I am so proud of myself!  I know, I know - it's just a 36 x 36 inch ticker tape quilt - there was no patchwork involved.  It won't even cover a bed.  In fact, it's going to hang on the wall behind ours.  But it was a lot of work.  I spent a lot of hours perfectly placing all of those pieces of fabric and then sewing them all down with pin pricks all over my hands (safety pins next time!).  I had cramped fingers from cutting off tiny pieces of thread.

But what a payoff!  Tada, my friends.  Ta. Da.

Katie