Spunky Senior Liz Flaherty Sews Up Romances and Quilts



Liz Flaherty



Thanks so much for having me here. I never think of myself as “spunky,” but I do feel empowered by my age, my experience, the people and things I love, so maybe that’s the same thing.

I have a new book out. ONE MORE SUMMER, from Carina Press, is the book of my heart. Of the gazillion manuscripts I’ve started and the considerably fewer I’ve finished, it is the one I’ve never let go. Grace and Dillon are as real to me as nearly anyone I know. I hope they touch you in the same way. At the bottom of this blog, I’ll have buy links and a link to my website and to the site where I blog with some writer friends. There, that’s out of the way.

What do you say we talk about quilts?

When I retired from the post office in February, I made my plans public. I was going to write a lot—I have. I was going volunteer a lot—I haven’t. I was going to lose weight—I have. I was going to travel more—I have. And I was going to make a bed-size quilt for each of the Magnificent Seven, my grandkids.

Wait a minute, was I nuts? I didn’t even know how to make a quilt. While it was true I liked to sew, and hopefully I’d have a little more time, I certainly couldn’t…seven?

Well. I started easy, with a Brick Road in vibrant colors for my oldest granddaughter, got a little more intricate on each of the next three, then started the fifth. A Morning Star. I bought the fabric in a shop 200 miles away because when I looked at it, I thought of the 9-year-old who would get the next quilt. I bought a little extra fabric…you know, just in case.

The Morning Star has triangles. I never thought of triangles as being particularly evil once I finally passed geometry, but I have decided they’re really spawns of Satan. I read all kinds of books, tutorials, and blogs on how to cut and sew triangles so that voila!—they become beautiful star points. But actually triangles stretch. They go all catawampus just when you think you have them exactly right. They don’t know the meaning of the precise quarter-inch that seams in quilts are supposed to be. They are…well, I already said it—they’re just flat-out evil.

I had to cut seven million of them for the twin-size quilt I’m working on. The pattern said it was something like 254, but I’m sure that’s wrong. I worked on it through Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the launch week of ONE MORE SUMMER. Unlike when I made the 9-year-old’s mother’s wedding dress, I didn’t resort to tears or wine…well, maybe a glass here and there, but my language did get a little shocking.

This week, I started sewing the blocks together. Oh, my. Those nasty little triangles really are starting to work out. The quilt’s going to look great. And even if it didn’t, that would be okay. That’s something I’ve learned in this short year of retirement, that “great” is relative. If an okay quilt is wrapped around a grandkid, it’s automatically great.

And I’ve learned that those quilts, no matter how easy—not that any of them have been easy for me—or difficult, claim places in the heart just like books do.

I hope you have stories, people, and things that fill the places in your heart, too. Here's the links for  ONE MORE SUMMER (I hope you like it) and where you can find me. Thanks for stopping by!

http://ebooks.carinapress.com/19C28077-E8B2-400A-ACBF-FAE0579EE2F0/10/134/en/Default.htm

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/one-more-summer-liz-flaherty/1107412429

http://www.amazon.com/One-More-Summer-ebook/dp/B006BE6HAG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324908781&sr=8-1

I’d love to have you visit my website http://lizflaherty.com or http://wordwranglers.blogspot.com/ where I hang out with some of my best writer friends.