This Quilt Needs A Name

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is . . . the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. –Mark Twain

I've been puttering around off and on with an old Ph.D Quilt for the last several weeks whenever I wanted to avoid what I should really be doing. I cut the fabric almost exactly three years ago, not long after I won my Go! Fabric Cutter, using the large Drunkard's Path die. Recently, I sewed the curved pieces to their corners, squared them all up, laid them out and then stacked them row by row to be put away until I don't have so many other projects going on all at once. They've been sitting in my sewing area for over a week.

Before I can put my little stacks away, I need some help with a name for the quilt. How about a little back-story to go with that request? Yes? Great. Early in 2010, I bought half-yard cuts of six of the prints from a line of fabric called Metro Blue to make a wedding gift for a neighbor using her wedding colors and left over fabric from her wedding dress.

The framed Double Wedding Ring only took a little bit of the fabric, and the rest just seemed perfect for a Drunkard's Path quilt. And the fabrics and colors seemed perfect for a particular friend and neighbor. Her birthday is coming up in mid-November and I want to try and finish this quilt in time for that. I'll be calling on Melissa at Sew Shabby Quilting to help with the machine quilting again. If I get on the ball and finish Grasshopper's Halloween costume, I can get it to Melissa early enough to avoid a rush fee and still leave myself plenty of time to bind it. {And we're all rolling our eyes and shaking our head here, me most of all, because I'm imposing another crazy deadline on myself.}. Anway, I saved the stripey print for the binding {because stripey and binding go together like peanut butter and jelly} and cut the rest into enough pieces to make a nice throw-size quilt.

But, let's face it. That layout is a bit of a snooze-fest. It's not every very pretty. And it does not inspire a name. At all. I've been thinking about it every now and again for the past three years and I've got nothing. Zip. Zero. Nada. Not even the name of the fabric line, Metro Blue, works. So I tried something different.

The name of this Drunkard's Path design is Love Rings. But Love Rings isn't a name for a friendship quilt. I want the name to reflect the kind of person this friend is. She is kind to everyone, thoughtful, considerate and one of those people who quietly serves and never asks for thanks or recognition. Her husband's job takes him on frequent business trips. In addition, he has quite a busy volunteer job at church. While the work he does is of huge benefit to many, many people, I know it is hard for her to not have him there sometimes. I wanted to do a little something special for her to let her know that I appreciate everything she does and am grateful to have her as a friend. When I think of her, I think of this little poem by Edwin Markham:

There is a destiny which makes us brothers;
None goes his way alone.
All that we send into the lives of others
Comes back into our own.

But I'm having a hard time fitting all that into a single word or phrase that will fit nicely on a little embroidered label for the back of the quilt. I've thought of a few names, like Reciprocity, but the sentiment "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" really isn't right. Calling the quilt What Goes Around Comes Around isn't really much better, and I don't believe in Karma, per se, although I do believe that every action has an Equal and Opposite Reaction. I thought about Ripples, which seems to work a bit better than the others. The quilt kind of looks like water rippling out. But I'm not sure about that either. I'm just about ready to call it Quilt With No Name, but I've been humming that song by America and a quilt name that inspires incessant humming of a melancholy tune from the 1972 just doesn't cut it, in my book.

If you've got a suggestion for what to call this quilt, I'd love to hear it! And while you're at it, I'd love to hear opinions on what panto to have Melissa quilt in it. I've got my eye on Belly Bop, Loops and Swirls, Van Gogh, Swirls, Rose Leaves and Retro Leaves.

Decisions, decisions.