Every good neighborhood has a place where everyone knows your name, and for quilters that place is the cutting table. It is where the gossip happens, where the big decisions get made, and where somebody always says she will cut just one more strip. Last Call at the Cutting Table is a gathering of the regulars, the favorite faces and sayings who tend to linger long after the lights should have gone off. Pull up a stool before we close.
What the regulars are saying
At this hour, the conversation gets honest. One regular leans in with her favorite comeback, lettered in bright rainbow type: Too Much Fabric? I Think the Phrase You Are Looking For Is Too Small Sewing Room. Down the bar, a crow drawn like an old pencil etching stands beside a pieced block and a hopelessly tangled length of thread, summing up the evening with two words and a period apiece: Well. That Escalated. Nobody asks what happened. Everybody already knows.
The ones who never want to go home
The Quilt Hair Don't Care birds have claimed the corner booth, naturally. Velma Nightwing sits with her storm of purple feathers and a glass of red beside her machine, Chaos Finch is mid-laugh on a heap of patchwork, and Snipsy Wren fluffs a rainbow cloud of curls with a rotary cutter resting at her feet. Curlene Spoolworth perches up on the branch where the spools hang, keeping an eye on the whole room, sunshine yellow and wide awake.
One for the road
And for the quilters already thinking about tomorrow, there are a few gentle send-offs. Wake Up and Quilt sets a sewing machine inside a round, glowing sunrise of rolling color, a promise for the morning. Threaded Dreams by the Sea circles a machine with a golden medallion sun and curling waves, and Patch of Sunshine pieces its whole sky from bright triangles. For the purist, Quilter, Hand Made reads like a label stitched to the back of a quilt, with a small patchwork block and the words stitching far and wide.
For the quilter who closes down the sewing room
This collection belongs to the friend who says she is heading to bed and is still pressing seams an hour later, the quilter who treats the cutting table like the best seat in the house, and anyone in The Stitch Circle who has ever let one more strip turn into one more block. You know exactly who always stays for last call. The cutting mat is wiped down, the rotary blade is closed, and the lamp is off. Well, almost off. She just wants to lay out one more row.
Written by Jacqueline. Thanks for reading.
