Speaking of Quilting... This Sucked.

Time for a little rant. I've had this problem over the last few months, since just before Thanksgiving.

Remember how I learned to quilt? I decided to use this knowledge to help my daughter's Social Studies class, who had been doing a project on Africa. They had decided to do quilts, wherein each student would do a drawing with fabric paints on a square of muslin, and then these squares would be put together into a quilt. Pretty simple, just squares and rectangles.

Armed with my new-found binding knowledge, I figured this would be pretty simple, and truly it was. Time-consuming, but straightforward. Time consuming, I have to note here, because although I truly do appreciate the efforts of whatever other parent decided to help by cutting the fabric, I think they may have cut it with their teeth. Piecing these suckers (there were 3) took a day and a half, and these were not complicated things. Oy.

Anyway, here comes the issue. And tell me, what would you do? I'd really like to know.

The plan was that I take the stuff home, do the quilts, and have them back in a week or two at most. Sounds simple enough; it was over Thanksgiving Break so I knew I'd have time. Enter the Twilight movie. What the heck does Edward Cullen have to do with it? Nothing, except that my daughter of course wanted to see the movie in a most desperate way. So did her friend from class, and her friend's mom. Well fine, sounds like a hoot, so we all went and enjoyed the very swoony Robert Pattinson and rolled our eyes at the squeaking horde of teens behind us in the theatre. I got to talking with the friends' mom, and lo and behold, she's a quilter! I told her about the project, and she very excitedly offered to help. Thank goodness, right? Don't have to piece and quilt and bind 3 quilts alone, right? Right.

So it goes that I did the tops, pinned and prepared them for quilting, and got everything together to do a marathon session on Thanksgiving Saturday at the mom's house. It got to be pretty late, and we were very close to finishing, so she offered to finish them up. More to the point she said:

"I can knock out a baby quilt in a day, I can bind 3 little quilts by next week, no problem!"

FAST FORWARD: 3 WEEKS LATER.

Now, it's my fault really. I assumed that a fellow parent at our mutual school would have the same values and level of responsibility that I do. Well, we all know what happens when we assume.

She finally deliviered TWO of the quilts after Winter Break. Two. Not three, but two. Where's the third, you ask?

Hell if she knows.

SHE LOST IT. Well, to be clear, she claims to have dropped it off, completed, at school, however nobody seems to remember her dropping a rather sizable quilt off to anyone, nor is it in evidence anywhere in the school. Might be an honest mistake right? Except for one thing...

She returned my bag of supplies, which originally had contained 3 each of coordinating pre-packaged binding (we were going for fast, not arty) for each quilt, just enough to have maybe a yard left over. What was returned to me included 2 unopened packages of blue binding, and guess which quilt is missing?

I don't know what happened, I honestly don't. Did she lose it and then craft an elaborate lie to cover it? Did she screw it up and in a fit of rage burn it in her backyard fire pit? Did she eat it? Nobody knows. What I *do* know is that there are 30 very disappointed kids in a first-period social studies class whose hard work is gone.

The woman's daughter & my daughter are pretty good friends, so I've decided to just let it go since clearly it's never going to be resolved. I spoke with the teacher (who incidentally doesn't blame me, though I blame myself) and I will be working with the kids to recreate as best we can. I don't, however, plan on having much to do with the mom anymore. I mean, would you?

Oh, one last thing, which I don't know whether to laugh or cry about... upon informing the woman that I would now have to recreate the quilt for the kids, who would have to re-do their work too, she said "Oh and of course I can help!" HAHAHAHAHAHA... *sob*.