Without going into too much detail, I had what would have been called a "nervous breakdown" in the olden days. It was easily the most traumatic part of my life, and I still haven't figured out what the hell happened.
However, this breakdown slammed the door shut on one part of my life, and opened the one to where I (happily) am now. My own little closet door to Narnia. The mental anguish wound up giving me the courage to make a change I had wanted to make for 18 years: I wanted to move home.
So after 18 years of living on Cape Cod, I finally got the balls to relocate. They say you can never go home again, but whoever says that is obviously not from St. Louis. The city and my old friends welcomed me back with open arms and it was more healing than any medication could have been. I am now exactly where I want to be:
But I digress. A couple of years before my breakdown, I had started a quilt for one of my best friends, Eric. I wanted to try a log cabin quilt because they seemed like they would be fun, given all the variations you can make with the same blocks.
This quilt seemed cursed, however. The monotony of it got to me. To make a log cabin quilt, you become your own little assembly line and I grew tired of doing the same thing over and over again. So after I made about nine 12" squares, I put them on a quilting rack and decided to take a break.
During that break, I got sick enough to warrant the use of a thermometer. I still had one of the old mercury thermometers and kept it, stupidly, in an old coffee mug that happened to be sitting by a window. When I'm sick, I like fresh air. All the fresh air of one of the famous Cape Cod wind storms blew the curtains, which knocked over the mug and broke the thermometer, spilling mercury onto the floor and...you guessed it, onto the quilt squares.
Since I value Eric as a friend and had no desire to poison him with my quilt (although what an interesting concept! A quilt as the murder weapon!), I had to hazmat the quilt squares. As luck would have it, I still had three squares at the quilting table that I hadn't completed yet. These I salvaged, and they were boxed up and moved to St. Louis with me (along with some other fabric that has a story to be told on the next post.).
Fast forward to me being back in St. Louis and reconnecting with a long lost BFF, Misha. We had fallen out of touch over the years, but instantly ignited our friendship upon my return. As serendipity would have it, Misha had developed a love of quilting during our break, as had I, and she got me away from hand-tying my quilts and taught me free motion machine quilting.
This was a turning point in my crafty little world. As with everything I become interested in, I plowed head first into it. Wonderful, trusting woman that she is, Misha gave me a queen-sized quilt she had put together to practice free-motion quilting on. I'm still amazed that she did that. I could have seriously screwed it up. But she's enormously cool that way, and as it turns out, I wasn't so shabby.
Free motion quilting, for those who don't know, is simply drawing with a sewing machine and thread. Basically, it's like you are moving the paper instead of the pencil. Takes some getting used to, but incredibly cool once you get the hang of it.
Since my brain was still tender from the beating it took during the breakdown, I found the free motion quilting to be wonderfully soothing. After finishing Misha's quilt, I felt ready to get started on finishing Eric's.
My breakdown was hard on Eric, I think. I was living with him at the time, and what happened to my head had some nasty ramifications on his life, as well. He was incredibly supportive and understanding to an extent that I still can't believe. So I wanted his quilt to be wonderful. I wound up putting an enormous amount of time and care into it. More so than any quilt I've done before or since. I call it "Trinity."
Used clear thread here. Basically fishing line. Very fractious stuff!
Reverse side
Eric has his quilt now and he seems to like it. However, the demon dog, Fizz, decided to chew a couple of holes in it. You'd think I'd mind after all the work I put into it, but quilts get their personality from things like this. I patched it up for him as best I could. Someday, when Fizz is gone, he'll look at those patches and miss her instead of wanting to kill her:
Fizz-tastic
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