Beginning

One week ago I said good-bye to working for wages as the assistant director of the local public library and began an experiment to find out what I could learn from making quilting my main priority. I have looked at the world through the eyes of a quilter for many years and have made quilts on commission, quilts to give as gifts or to celebrate special occasions, class assignments, quilts for exhibits, and some quilts just because they needed to be made. But quilting has usually been squeezed into the moments left over from the rest of life.

I will continue to garden, to make healthy meals, to take long walks with our endlessly energetic Golden Doodle, to worry about the environment, to make long trips to visit children and grandchildren, to read, to share my life with my husband, to have lunch with friends, but quilting will be a thread that runs through all those activities and I am privileging my quilting time enough so that dental appointments and car inspections will be scheduled around it. And I will see what quilting can tell me about the world, about myself, and about the relationship between them.

Making the steps of this exploration semi-public (a hard thing for me to do with anything, but particularly with a work in progress) in a blog will hopefully keep me honest and will hopefully keep me recording. It will be a journal of this journey—not to make quilts that sell or win prizes but that teach me something.