Scrapbooking, Quilting, Needlework, Arts & Crafts

Bed Quilt

Making a bed quilt that satisfies the artistic sensibilities of your bed-sharing partner can lead to some interesting compromises ...

When my husband and I were first married, we had our first fight over a bed quilt. I was in love with the plush, lacy quilt I’d had on top of my own bed for several years, and he thought that something more masculine would be appropriate since we’d now be sharing a bed. He wanted a bed quilt in dark colors, with geometric shapes, when I’ve only ever slept under blankets decorated with flowers and girly frills. We eventually had to sort it out and move on with our lives because, as we would soon find out, there are so many more interesting things to fight about in a marriage to waste much energy arguing about the bed quilt.

We had to come to an agreement, somewhere between lace covered roses and darkly colored geometrical designs. We tried to find a bed quilt with a pattern we both liked but it was practically impossible. Our tastes in bedding were so different that if I saw something I liked, I could immediately assume my husband would think it was the most hideous design ever created. I liked checks, he liked stripes. I liked bright colors, he liked earth tones. I didn’t mind paisleys, he would rather sleep on the sidewalk than under a bed quilt covered in paramecium-shaped designs. On it went until finally we decided to buy a plain white down comforter for our bed to get us through the winter, and then we would resume our fight about the bed quilt once spring came again.

Luckily my mother-in-law intervened before we had a chance to segregate ourselves into separate rooms. She is a quilter and she offered to design a quilt for us, using fabrics we picked out ourselves. The possibilities were endless. If you’ve ever been on a trip to a fabric store then you know how much there is to choose from. They have plain fabric, textured fabric, they even have fabric made out of muppet fur! I knew we’d have lots of options.

When the day finally arrived for us to visit the fabric store, we realized that while we both had individual ideas about what a pre-made bed quilt should look like, we also had our own ideas about what a custom-made quilt should look like. In the end, we decided to each create one side of the quilt and flip it on the bed every once in a while. And now our time is freed up to fight about more important things like who left the toothpaste gobs in the sink.

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