Teamwork

My family will kill me for posting this photo, but I'm doing it anyway:

Pepper's not my sister, but she's on my team, so that counts.

I love looking through old photos in the "quilt" folder on my desktop because I find little gems like these. The above photo was taken just after we'd finished de-installing the first exhibit of the quilt at MassArt this summer. I couldn't possibly have taken it all down without them. Pepper, my mom, Pelvis, and my dad rubbed their fingers raw removing the vinyl letters from that wall. I'm extremely lucky they didn't kill me after the power failed and the heat guns stopped working. 

Mike and Melinda, saving my butt.

These other photos were from the same exhibit, but aren't by any means an exhaustive record of everyone who deserves major thanks for doing pain-in-the-ass work. To the left, there's Mike and Melinda, who came at the last possible second to help me re-hang the quilt after it fell. They dropped plans and zipped over into a land of no parking for a job that wound up taking only ten minutes. Below is a photo of my skater sister, Shay, and my teammate, Speed Metal, who helped me pin hundreds of letters and envelopes to a very hard, unforgiving wall. They had hands of steel.

I've had SO MUCH HELP with this project it simply blows my mind. Of course, the people who contribute squares have made the quilt  actually happen and always have my thanks. However, my thanks in this post are to the people who responded to last-minute "please save me" Facebook posts and text messages and offered me a different kind of help - the kind involving a lot more wobbly ladders, cut fingers, sore legs, and free pizza.

Shay and Metal risking their
fingers to numerous push-pins.

They've allowed me to sleep a little bit more because I didn't have to stay up all night installing an exhibit. They've allowed me to squeeze in a bathroom break or a nap while they watched the display at a tournament. They allowed me to be on time for class because they took over machine-quilting large chunks of border material together. They let me see my family because, well, they WERE my family and they came to help on oppressively hot summer days in a tiny gallery with no functioning windows.

Working on this giant beast of a project has really hammered home how many wonderful people I have in my life. I wish I had more photos of these acts of mega kindness and herosim on a small scale. I guess I'll have to settle for saying "thank you so much" and "you know who you are."