"And I'll stitch the words into my heart with a needle and thread..."

This quilt top started life as a potential patchwork tablecloth.  I have a reasonable stash of fabric (don't we all) and I cut a stack of oranges, browns and creams a year ago.  They remained in their stack for sometime.  They were conferring as to what they wanted to be.

One day I took the stack and cut them all in half, based on a whim.  I was following not yet knowing where I was being led.  I arranged them realizing what they already knew, they were a brick wall.  Next the grout (is it called grout in a brick wall?) was needed.  Given that I am trying very hard to use what I have on hand, I had to make a choice from only a few blues, the one I chose having snowflakes... much to my daughter's dismay.  She found my selection intolerable but she is 16 so many things are intolerable to her.  Not to be deterred I told her it is my representation of a wall in the winter.  That was as far as it went.  It waited again.  I had no idea how I was going to quilt it.

Last night I went to see Passenger in Toronto at the Sound Academy.  It was, well, amazing only skims the surface.  His lyrics are poems and I am forever writing one or the other of them down, here and there and everywhere.  Today I had been thinking of how to record his lovely lyrics in a quilt.  That was when she called to me.  I brought her out, counted her rows and realized they matched the number of lines from the song I was thinking of...

Well I’m sick of this town, this blind man’s forage

They take your dreams down and stick them in storage

You can have them back son when you’ve paid off your mortgage and loans

Oh to hell with this place,  I’ll go it my own way

I’ll stick out my thumb and trudge down the highway

Someday someone must be going my way home

Till then I’ll make my bed from a disused car

With a mattress of leaves and a blanket of stars

And I’ll stitch the words into my heart with a needle and thread

Don’t you cry for the lost, smile for the living

Get what you need and give what you’re given

You know life’s for the living so live it

Or you're better off dead.

- Life's For The Living, Passenger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl2GwLtMX7s

If you ever have a chance to see him in concert, I implore you to go, you will not be disappointed.  I will post pictures once this is quilted... :)