When I first decided to make you a quilt, I looked at hundreds of patterns online, copied and pasted them into photoshop, played with colors and lines and patterns and designs. I looked over fabrics, touched them, ran them between my fingers, looking for just the right colors and just the right feel.  I wanted it to be perfect.

Eventually, though, I settled on three fabrics that I liked, and decided to just do a checkerboard pattern. Even then, I didn’tmake it into a classic crib size (whatever that is), instead, I just cut out squares and sewed up strips and sewed them together into a just-barely-a-rectangle. The strips and squares were best guesses, really, and not all the corners match up.  When I pinned it together, it took a while, because everything was just a little crooked.

My plan to quilt it was a good one; I imagined each individual square quilted just inside the perimeter.  Sure, I might use the machine to do it, but it would be perfect. When I tried, though, it was your due date, and I changed my plans. Maybe I’d just do a straight stitch on either side of each seam, so that it was KIND OF like quilting each individual square. . . I did that on one seam, and that was taking too long, too. So instead, I just ran a straight stitch along each seam, and in the end your quilt is far from perfect.  There are wrinkles sewn in, and places where it bunched, and a few places where the straight stitch  sways out of line. I still have to bind it, which will help mask that the backing and top don’t quite meet at one end, and kind of on one side, but it’s almost done, imperfections and all.

But really, that’s the thing with me. You’re going to find that I’m not perfect at all. Some people, real quilters, have racks and leather thimbles and special glasses and threads to make the right angles all meet up, to make their quilts a geometric miracle, to make them heirloom worthy.  I have a five year old sewing machine that I got for ninety dollars at Walmart, and a strong desire to have made something just for you.  That’s all.

So now you have a quilt, almost done, all lime green and orange and blue and flannel, and bunchy in some parts and crooked in others, but every piece was sewn together with you on my mind, and in my body, swirling around, waiting to be born.  This quilt will never be a museum piece, but it’s yours. I hope that you don’t mind the imperfections, in it, or in me.

I can’t wait to meet you.