Melinda Mae

This is a quilt I did from my scraps sometime last year. I chose one focus fabric, the green with red flowers in some of the centers, and then I found all other fabrics that remotely went with it. I had to buy 2 others for the centers because I ran out of my focus fabric. I also bought borders. The block is from a quilt my friend Erica did. I had no idea that you didn't strip piece the checker boards when I started. As I was sewing, and sewing, and sewing, the quilt kept getting bigger and bigger. It reminded me of the poem by Shel Silverstein, so I named it Melinda Mae. If you have a copy of Where the Sidewalk Ends, look it up, because the pictures make the poem. Quilting is a lot like eating a whale. And I usually finish because I told myself if I started, I would.

Melinda Mae, by Shel Silverstein

Have you heard of tiny Melinda Mae,
Who ate a monstrous whale?
She thought she could,
She said she would,
So she started in right at the tail.

And everyone said, "You're much too small,"
But that didn't bother Melinda at all.
She took little bites and she chewed very slow,
Just like a good girl should . . .

. . . And in eighty-nine years she ate that whale
Because she said she would!