At the Quilters Convention I was asked how I had made such an astonishing quilt. None of them believed me when I told them the story.

"I had planned on making a quilt exactly like this as my masterpiece, and I had everything ready to begin. Suddenly my husband walked in and suggested we go on a trip. We had never been on a trip before, so I didn’t waste a minute.   To avoid leaving a mess I threw all the materials, the design, the backing, the pieces of cloth, the scissors, the needles, and the thread, into the drier.

When we came back a month later I found the drier was turning, and when I opened it up I found this quilt, exactly the way I had planned it. As my husband and I discussed how this could have happened we decided a rat must have come and fiddled with the controls. As the drier turned and turned, a needle must have got threaded, and a colored piece of cloth got cut and joined to another. As this went on day after day by an incredible fluke of chance the quilt evolved to perfection.

So nobody made this quilt. It evolved by chance."

(This story was first told at Little Trinity Church, Toronto in 1976. It was repeated again and again in discussions, and it was reenacted as a spoof at my farewell in 1978)