I stood before the judge with my chin up and my eyes forward — I wasn’t ashamed of what I did; nor was it a big deal. I glanced to my right and saw that the jury wasn’t too interested either. Of the twelve jurors, four were on their phones, three were sleeping, another three of them were collaborating on a sudoku puzzle, and the last two were trying to get their fingers out of a Chinese finger trap. I just wanted to go back to my quilting.

As the judge listed my charges, I started to daydream, thinking of the beginnings of what got me here in the first place. On a rainy Sunday when I was a young lad, father dropped me off at my grandmother’s for the afternoon. What I thought would be another tedious afternoon of watching her favorite game shows, like Spinning Cash Wheel, Where’s My Totaled Car?, and Stabbed!, it actually turned out to be a life changing afternoon.

Grandmother’s cable bill was overdue, so there was nothing else for her and me to do than to enjoy each other’s company and have quality family time together. She quickly realized how discomforting the situation was without cable television, so she ignored my company and got out her quilting materials. And it was there that I first observed the collaborative magic of one’s hands, needles, and thread. My grandmother was a master quilt maker, and folks of such type were never easy to come by. I desired to learn all I could from her. Her maxim was “you reap what you sew.”

My mind came back to the court room and I heard the judge still listing the charges against me. So I decided to daydream again and then reminisced of my years of quilting and how my techniques improved over the years. After starting with small projects, like making quilts for my baby siblings, I got more ambitious and sewed full sized quilts for every member of my family. Making quilts was so natural to me that it started to become a subconscious habit — I’d awake in the morning to find more quilts covering my body than when I fell asleep the night before.

I lived, breathed, and ate quilting. The eating part was difficult at first, but I got used to the funny taste. I began to see patterns in everything that I needed to quilt into reality. The whole universe is a rich tapestry of potential quilting genius, and it was up to me to sew all of the pieces together. My mind came back to the court room as the judge resumed the charges held against me for pursuing my dreams and sewing passions. Sew what?

“… stitching together all of the vehicles at the library parking lot, using the remains of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams for your ‘Founding Fabrics’, and those poor turtles at the animal shelter… How do you plead?”

“Quilty, as charged.”

The judge didn’t think it was funny, but the jury was in stitches. They didn’t realize I had sewn them to their seats.