Homespun Wisdom
Yesterday I finished my first usable bed-sized quilt. It’s a queen-sized log cabin variation that I made for DS, and as soon as I can figure out how to post a picture, I will put it here.
I’ve made bed quilts before, but they were so shabbily constructed that their useful life was confined to stuffing them back into the trash can liner I’d used as a “gift bag”. Quilting is a long, painful process for me, and one that I’m not fully prepared to say that I enjoy. The Working With My Hands part is satisfying, if still disappointing because I have no eye for color, no ability to sew on point and no patience to quilt feathered circles or detailed flowers into the blocks. But I persevere, hoping that someday I’ll be able to do something that I enjoy with at least a modicum of talent.
The thing I like best about quilting is the sewing, called ‘piecing’ in quilt lingo. In piecing, I can watch my efforts over a time continuum that does not resemble moving through a black hole, unlike all the other parts of the quilting process. Fabric selection, washing, cutting, assembly, layering, quilting, binding, and, for me, a truckload of bellowed cursing, are the reams of pain and torture that I endure in order to do the one thing about quilting that I like.
I do all these things because I understand it’s a process, but frankly I’ve always considered it a little bit of false advertising to call ‘quilting’ just ‘quilting’ and not ‘back-breaking thankless work with a tiny bit of creation inserted in the middle’. It’s rather akin to a peanut butter cookie that’s smashed in between foods that give me the dry heaves. I want the cookie, but I have to think really, really hard about making the effort to go get it.
It’s a difficult, stress-laden hobby, and most times, I cannot explain why I haven’t thrown it all in and returned to sewing. Sewing is easy. when I decided to learn sewing, I took a class, bought a machine, and in a few weeks I was churning out dresses, shirts and even a few draperies. Even now, years removed from regular sewing, I can build a shirt in 5 hours. It took me over a month to make this quilt, and I muttered obscenities to myself at every turn of the needle.
Sometimes I think it’s my attempt to teach myself patience or to learn precision work. I’m a high-level thinker and I work in technology, so there’s nothing about my professional life that I can ‘touch’ as an accomplishment. Quilting gives me that, though it also serves as a reminder that Mistakes are Visible, and since I always give my projects away as presents, this escalates them to Mistakes are Visible to Others. Still, despite my poor quality, my poorer attitude and the pinched nerves in my low back that inevitably happen as a project winds down, I continue.
And here’s why: this morning, when I showed the quilt to DS and he just stood on the bed smiling at it and holding me, I knew that it had been worth it.
A the N(eedled)
I’ve made bed quilts before, but they were so shabbily constructed that their useful life was confined to stuffing them back into the trash can liner I’d used as a “gift bag”. Quilting is a long, painful process for me, and one that I’m not fully prepared to say that I enjoy. The Working With My Hands part is satisfying, if still disappointing because I have no eye for color, no ability to sew on point and no patience to quilt feathered circles or detailed flowers into the blocks. But I persevere, hoping that someday I’ll be able to do something that I enjoy with at least a modicum of talent.
The thing I like best about quilting is the sewing, called ‘piecing’ in quilt lingo. In piecing, I can watch my efforts over a time continuum that does not resemble moving through a black hole, unlike all the other parts of the quilting process. Fabric selection, washing, cutting, assembly, layering, quilting, binding, and, for me, a truckload of bellowed cursing, are the reams of pain and torture that I endure in order to do the one thing about quilting that I like.
I do all these things because I understand it’s a process, but frankly I’ve always considered it a little bit of false advertising to call ‘quilting’ just ‘quilting’ and not ‘back-breaking thankless work with a tiny bit of creation inserted in the middle’. It’s rather akin to a peanut butter cookie that’s smashed in between foods that give me the dry heaves. I want the cookie, but I have to think really, really hard about making the effort to go get it.
It’s a difficult, stress-laden hobby, and most times, I cannot explain why I haven’t thrown it all in and returned to sewing. Sewing is easy. when I decided to learn sewing, I took a class, bought a machine, and in a few weeks I was churning out dresses, shirts and even a few draperies. Even now, years removed from regular sewing, I can build a shirt in 5 hours. It took me over a month to make this quilt, and I muttered obscenities to myself at every turn of the needle.
Sometimes I think it’s my attempt to teach myself patience or to learn precision work. I’m a high-level thinker and I work in technology, so there’s nothing about my professional life that I can ‘touch’ as an accomplishment. Quilting gives me that, though it also serves as a reminder that Mistakes are Visible, and since I always give my projects away as presents, this escalates them to Mistakes are Visible to Others. Still, despite my poor quality, my poorer attitude and the pinched nerves in my low back that inevitably happen as a project winds down, I continue.
And here’s why: this morning, when I showed the quilt to DS and he just stood on the bed smiling at it and holding me, I knew that it had been worth it.
A the N(eedled)
posted by Former Fat Girl Gone Skinny | 10:21 AM
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