I’ve just finished the last stitch on the binding. I show it to my daughter, Devorah, and she says I should now wash it.

Did she say… WASH IT ????? !!!!!

Aaaaarrrrggggghhhhhh! Those of you who are avid followers of my blog will know that I never wash my quilts. Not before, not after. I mean, what if it shrinks and looks horrible. What if those gorgeous colours I drooled over when I bought the fabric will fade. What if I wash it in the wrong temperature and then instead of washing out, I set the pencil lines firmly in. So much to worry about!

But you know when someone tells you to do something, and there’s something about how they’re telling you – maybe the assured tone of their voice, perhaps their matter-of-fact, unattached, almost blasé manner, or just that what they’re saying to you rings the faintest of little bells of “you know it’s the right thing to do” in a very far back remote corner of your common sense brain, and with the greatest of trepidation, you follow? Well, I did it. After all, it is my daughter telling me. And I trust her. She takes risks with quilting where I play it safe. She’s clue-ier (crickey, how do you spell that word?) than I am in so many things. So, I put the quilt in the machine, ran the water, and closed the lid. And then I ran out of the laundry. I had to. Just in case I might try to pull it out. As if that’d work!

So here’s my quilt, spinning, spinning, washing, getting awfully wet. It just looks so sad in there like that. Oh man, I hope I did the right thing. Please tell me I did.

only minutes away from the spin cycle and then I can pull it out, hopefully in one piece!