Further to my confessions of domestic inadequacies, I have another example. I promise this will be the last of the sewing anecdotes. The summer we were married, E bought some new Canturbury rugby pants for our honeymoon on the sailboat. He brought them home to our apartment and put them on the table in front of me… “They are too long and need hemming” he said… I responded  “we are out of masking tape”…. He took his clothes to his sister.. She hemmed them.

Our daughter uses the same hemming method as I do.. I am sure she would understand how excited I was when MB told me that I would need masking tape for the next stage of my quilt square. “If all I need to do is tape the square together”  I thought… this will be a snap.. no problem I can do this.

We have machine sewn the pieces for the top of the quilt square together. I have placed it on top of the felt lining and then again on top the blue backing. I basted the three together as instructed by the patience of Job, MB.  I hand sewed over top of the machine seams. This is called “stitching in the ditch”. In order to stitch in the ditch I needed to borrow a thimble. The earliest thimbles date back to 221 BC and the Han Dynasty in China. Up until today, a thimble was about as necessary to me as chopsticks.. Forks and masking tape have been invented.

MB lent me a thimble to push the needle through the thick three pieces of material and thank goodness she did…. If not, the finger pushing the needle into the material would look as bad as the finger on the other side receiving the needle. The index finger on my left hand which sat unsuspecting on the other side of the material is covered in holes and blood…But the hard part is done, I thought.. The rest of the quilted squares are finished somehow with masking tape.

Went for a walk with the women to see the new beaver lodge on the island. Apparently Hudson’s in-laws have arrived for the winter and he is building them a home across the pond from him and the Mrs. Construction is in the early stages.  

My brief moment in the quilting comfort zone evaporated when MB informed me that the masking tape would be used not for sticking but as a straight line guide across the top of the squares while I hand sew (quilt) lines every inch and half (or so) across the square… sigh.. I am going to have to

get another thimble