Distractions

I have been somewhat frustrated that my actual quilting time since I left the library has been limited. I spent a few wonderful days visiting children and grandchildren and being the surprise guest at our daughter's wedding shower and then returned home itching to quilt but needing to straighten the house and prepare a meal for a visiting friend I had not seen in about a year. Today nothing was on the schedule except quilting, but this morning we awoke to trees and bushes bowed--some beyond the breaking point--by an early wet snowstorm. As I started on my walk with Terra, I knew I would have to spend time shaking snow off the trees to keep more branches from breaking or being permanently deformed.

The world we walked through was beautiful as only the first heavy snowfall of the season can be. And as I whacked at the dogwood tree in the back of the house and the snow catapulted off the branches onto my head and down the neck of my coat, I laughed and realized that all this is part of my quilting. I care about these trees and bushes, enough to spend time trying to help them out, and this connection I feel must find its way into the quilts I create.

Besides, with all the huge problems in the world that are so large I feel I can have little impact on them, it was cathartic to be able to make so clear a difference as the branches bounced skyward.

The same is true of my relationship with friends and family: that I care about them, that I interact with them changes the kinds of quilts I make.

And so when I turned on the sewing machine later in the morning and sliced into the dark gray fabric with the rotary cutter, I did not feel that I was finally getting to quilt but that I was just transitioning to another stage of quilting.