I’m cruising along, chain piecing quilt blocks with umpteen hundreds of quilt pieces. A song, that becomes a quilt cadence in my head, is on repeat and I am in the ‘quilt zone.’

I’ve pressed the seams and am getting ready to add the next set of fabric to my blocks. I organize the already sewn pieces lying on one of my legs with the pieces to be sewn to the fabrics on my laying right leg.

I continue with my blocks, adding the next sets of fabric to my original ones, pressing along the way, still in
the ‘quilt zone.’ I am getting anxious, excited even, because I’m on my last piece of fabric for each quilt block. I put the unfinished blocks from one thigh and the final piece of fabric from my other thigh into the sewing machine, one
piece after the other. I am now extremely focused and obsessed. I cannot possibly stop anywhere in this
sewing process, until I finish sewing this last piece on my blocks and press the seams. I’m a force to be reckoned
with.

My anticipation is mounting. Three more to go…two more to go…final block sewn! I bask in my glory of putting
all of the blocks together so quickly. No errors, no mismatched seams ‐ quilt piecing at its finest.

I stand up, needing to stretch my hunched over shoulders and stressed back (because I’ve sewn with my
shoulders hunched over) and trim apart the blocks so I can press them, all nice and pretty. Oh the pure joy I
feel! I am super‐quilt‐woman!

I sit back down and pick up the last block sewn so I can cut them apart. Where is all this thread coming from?
I have a string of thread a mile long and wonder if my spare spool that sits beside my sewing spool on my
sewing machine, that I use for my bobbin thread, has gotten tied up in my quilt blocks ‐ you know, because I
am super‐quilt‐woman and sewed so fast it dislodged the end of the thread spool and got caught in my
blocks somewhere.

Instead of trying to find out where that extra thread came from, I figure that I’ll be careful when cutting my
chain pieced blocks apart and find the end of that spool of thread along the way.

I pull the first block toward me and am now completely dumbfounded. What happened? What in the heck
happened??? I pull the next block toward me and the next block and the next block…and all of the blocks,
from about the middle of the first block I sewed, were naked. I lost my magical super‐quilt‐woman powers.
Right there. My emblem was ripped from my chest, my wrist pin holders and even my SOCKS were repossessed
by the quilting powers that be. I hung my head in shame. I think I have a tear in my eye, too. My ‘quilt zone’ disappears. I have just sewn umpteen quilt blocks naked. Oh, don’t worry, I’m not naked (ewww)…but my stitching is! And you know that long thread I couldn’t figure out where it came from was? Yup. It was right where it was supposed to be ‐ attached to that first quilt block, in the exact spot where my sewing machine ran out of bobbin thread. Quilting naked, indeed. Pass me a tissue, please.

© 2015 ~ Tammy Harrison ~ All Rights Reserved. Tammy Harrison is a wife, mother of four teenagers (gulp) and uses Quilt Therapy and humor to entertain herself. You can find Tammy online at www.TKHarrison.com.