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.