Who out there also knows the pressure of this thought: “Got
to get this done tonight because I can’t get back to it for at least a week!”
And you put on extra speed, eventually arriving at an acute personal
understanding of the old adage “Haste makes waste…”, as you contemplate your
seam ripper and a poorly executed block.
My approach to
quilting has had a certain rushed quality over the years. I’ve cheerfully attributed this to
circumstances. During the 20 years I’ve
quilted, I’ve raised four children as a single mom and sustained a professional
career. But I am not immune to the small
voice of conscience that says you don’t have to do it this way. If you took more time, and attention, or took
some classes, or were more creative, you would be so much happier with your
results. But I don’t take the time. Why not?
There’s also the siren call of a larger machine. More throat space, more power, more features
– just more! Stars in my eyes, I gaze
longingly at the vendor displays at quilt shows. If only I had one of those, my quilting would
magically improve! However. I know enough about myself to hear the
self-deception in those words, even if my bank account could stand the
strain. I don’t even use all the
features in the sewing machine I have.
Who am I kidding? So that’s not
the real issue. It’s something else.
I have a short attention span. Bed size quilts have been torture, not only
because they’re hard to quilt on a home machine, but also because you are
working on the same thing for weeks, in little bits of time the demands of family and work. Smaller pieces are not only more doable,
they’re more fun, because you get to start over sooner. But
they do not have the scope for design and the aesthetic that the larger, modern
quilts do. Modern quilts are so
beautiful and mind-bendingly inspiring.
I want to make more of them, even though the scale is very often on the
larger side. Even if I could find the
time, could I find the concentration?
Then life changed.
First, I retired. Spent the first three months traveling and then
settled down at home, living by myself, and arranging my own time. All the kids are grown and gone. I thought about changing my lifelong habit of
getting something done as fast as I could, so I could move on to the next
thing, either work, kids or another quilt.
Could that be possible? Unfortunately,
the answer for me at first was no, not easily.
The lack of other responsibilities revealed the short attention span
issue in all its conflicted glory. My ingrained
habits resisted change, but I became more conscious of them, and began to think
about how to develop a new, more mindful approach to the work itself.
Then the world changed, in a matter of days. Life in the time of coronavirus – almost all
the activities I’d counted on to make my retirement worthwhile proscribed. No visits to kids or grandkids. No chorus rehearsals, no eating out with friends, concerts, or live music. Just staying at home in my apartment,
emerging only to go to the grocery store, with a mask on, and keeping up with
family and friends virtually.
I’ve spent a lot of time sewing.
Sewing without external demands and distractions. Knowing in my heart that it doesn’t matter if
I finish this piece, or this row of quilting, tonight. Having uninterrupted time to really make it
right somehow making it possible. Engaging
with the work as it progresses, and through work, slowing the thrum of anxiety
and loneliness. Emotion, intellect,
creativity and skill coming together in meditation and grace. The hours passing more or less unnoticed,
until the light fades and you realize it’s time to think about dinner.
I am not saying that the enforced time alone in my house has
been a good thing. How could that be?
It’s a side consequence of the misery of millions and comes with fear for one’s
own health and for friends and family. Not
to mention fear that the world as we knew it will never be the same. No one
knows what it will be like on the other side of this pandemic. But sequestration has offered opportunities
to slow down, to think more about process and less about completion and more
about the meaning of the work than the fate of the finished product. I can be grateful for that.
Why
is quilting so deeply satisfying? The
combination of skill and creativity, the opportunity to create something that
hasn’t existed before, to have a vision in your head and to work it out in
fabric (even though the final work never quite looks like it did in your head). Working with color and texture and design and images and making something
useful with your own hands. It’s all of
that, but that isn’t all it is. My
devotion to it has an inexplicable quality, like the change in life’s rhythms
in this time of great stress. It’s a
mystery to me. People ask why I spend so
much of my time doing this? I don’t have a satisfactory answer for them. It’s just what I do. Even, and maybe especially, in the time of
coronavirus.
