Winnie the Pooh Spool Quilt

Spools are well known to be symbiotic with thread, but a spool paired with a quilt? Intriguing! I saw this idea in a magazine and ripped out the article (forgive me) and put it in my "Someday" pile. The pile is pretty big and needs the help of a sturdy shovel when it must be relocated. It's best to leave it untouched and let a blanket of dust gently render it discreetly invisible.

But...the spool idea kept resurfacing, and eventually, like most temptations, it would not be denied. I began to hunt for that motivational literature I had stashed in Someday.  While the pile was easily located, the article was not. Nor was it scanned in as a computer file, nor stuck in any of the myriad binders that follow me from room to room. It wasn't in the night table, nor could I recall seeing it as a liner in the bird cage. 

I decided to bide my time until it resurfaced by looking for a suitable spool. That would be easy since I had a few hundred spools to choose from. I like thread. A lot. A closer investigation of these revealed that not one spool was suitable. They were not tall enough, most were utilitarian plastic, and if you were to wrap a quilted piece around them they would be filled by a single wrap of quilting. As usual, I moaned about this terrible unjust state of affairs to my husband. If anyone knew how to resolve the spool enigma, he would. And, of course, he did.

Just like quilters who are always looking for new ways to use up their fabric, a man with a lathe is always on the hunt for a new project that will give the lathe a suitable workout. Yes, of course he could make a spool. Child's play! What size would I like? How luxurious - he would make it any height and diameter that I wanted! We decided on a six inch tall spool, which ultimately lent itself nicely to a series of four inch squares, sewn together in a chain.  

The spool he made was perfect, but the next step? I just could not come up with an idea that satisfied my desire to do "not too much work" since this would only be a prototype.  The spool sat on my quilt table for (forgive me yet again) two years. In all that time the magazine article never turned up, nor did any suitably easy ideas. 

At a guild meeting one night, we were clearing out fabric that had not been used during a group project several members had completed. Passed up and looking forlorn was a fabric panel with Winnie the Pooh characters in small scenes. It was meant to be made into a cloth book. The scale was just right for the 4x6 inch postcard quilts I am fond of making, so Winnie and Co. came home with me. It too sat around unused for a while as all fabrics must wait their turn. It's a game of patience. But I do leave newer ones in plain sight so they can churn up some ideas. This causes a lot of bothersome clutter, but sometimes they inspire me with something other than a grinding feeling of guilt for my neglect. Such was the case with Winnie as I realized the scale was exactly what I needed for my test quilt for the spool.  

The article was still stubbornly astray, but I prefer to figure things out myself anyway, so I forged ahead. I soon had a chain of four inch tall squares with a little bit of sashing sewn between them. I laid them out on a strip of batting and painstakingly machine quilted around each item on every block. So much for a fast test piece, I was devoting way too much time to leave it at that. I'd committed myself now! 

It needed a backing, but I did not want to do another set of squares that would be difficult to line up with the top layer of squares. I've made enough foolish choices in life to recognize at least a few of them. But only a few...  I found some cloud fabric and after consulting the internet for pretty much every quote that Winne the Pooh ever made I added his words to the clouds, "Sometimes the smallest things take up the most room in your heart".  Guess I could have gone with a really small spool after all.

And the magazine article? Yep, it turned up about three weeks after my spool quilt was done. Typical!