Grey Cat Quilts

Zeb has been asking to ‘sew with Mommy’. I debated buying him a wooden sewing machine, but kiddo is a tech whiz and would have seen through that bullshit right away. He understands that Mommy’s sewing machine turns on, so his should too. His should also beep when he pushes a button, or screech at him when he does something job – just like Mommy’s does.

So, I compromised:

I nerfed my old, reliable Brother CS6000i by removing the needle and gave him a pile of squares cut from my scraps. I showed him how to keep his fingers out of the way of the shank, how to feed fabric under the foot, and how to press the start/stop button. Zeb’s deliriously happy – now, he can sew when I sew.

If he’s still interested in a few years, I’ll sit down with him, some more of those scrappy squares, and guide him through piecing his first quilt top. I’ll probably end up up doing the quilting myself, and handle stitching the binding down.

I’m okay with that.

In fact, I look forward to it.

I look forward to introducing my son to a skill set that will allow him to expand his horizons, develop his creativity, challenge his math and geometry skills, as well as defying gender stereotypes. I want him to have a skill that he can carry through life, to be able to experience the singular joy that comes from creating something, from idea to finished item.

Zebediah deserves that.

I spent yesterday evening with Zebediah, as is the norm most week nights. It was a little different than most evenings… This time, Zeb wanted to play in my quilts.

That’s right. IN the quilts.

The Cheating Farmer’s Wife quilts became a quilt train. Really, it was a quilt fort, but Zeb insisted that it was a train.

There’s something intensely satisfying about how my family responds to the quilts I make. Both hubby and kiddo prefer to sleep under them, and kiddo has decided that quilt forts (and vans and planes and trains) are the way to go.

Of course, Zeb has no fear, and decided that the quilts were a bridge, and needed to be crossed. Picturing a repeat of the monkey bars incident, after which he was inconsolable, I put an end to that plan.

Of course, he got me under the quilt fort at some point, at which time I once again marveled at kiddo’s core strength and his sheer hyperactivity.

While I was down there, though, I was caught by the way the sun was shining through the quilt layers and took a photo while I could.

Kiddo and I spent the better part of the evening hiding from the world in our little, quilted shelter. I’ll be so very happy if I can look at these quilts in the future and known that they were loved to pieces.