Quilty As Charged

Local raconteur Spike Gillespie has been a favorite of ours for a long time. Easily the hardest writing writer in Austin, the moxie-mad Gillespie stole our hearts with the annual Kick Ass Awards ceremony she holds on her birthday.

She isn't one to hold anything back or censor herself. Her "dot-novel", a completely free book, opens with the phrase "donkey-cock," and the cover of her amazing memoir, Pissed Off, features a middle-finger in prime form. She was also the driving force behind the Dick Monologues and those Naked calendars.

The book describes a national community of quilters, passionate to the point of obsession, who collectively spend over a billion dollars a year on quilting. Spike takes us from separate scraps of cloth to cohesive masterpieces worthy of hanging in museums, as some do. Quilty As Charged also walks down that dark alley of quilting's seedier side—like the story of Dan Puckett, a man who sold a defective sewing machine that burst into flames and electrocuted its user, Arlene Blackburn. After Blackburn sued him, Puckett exacted revenge by splattering a gallon of bleach all over her prize-winning, $6,500 "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Elvis" quilt at the Quilt Fest. Puckett, arrested for destroying a quilt, served six months in prison.