Way Forward

My Greek Cross quilt is finished at last, beautifully quilted by my sweet friend Jennifer of Farm Fresh Stitches, washed and dried to crinkly perfection, and now lovingly draped across the arm of the overstuffed chair in my bedroom. A quilt used to take me about a month to sew from start to finish. This time it took a year and a half from piecing the first block to putting the last stitch in the binding, but considering everything else that happened in that span of time, this feels like a special victory.

This quilt was for me and my husband, so I used a lot of vintage style prints for the centers since we both love that look. Each block felt like its own little work of art. I've really come to believe that if you love every block by itself, you'll love them all together as a group, especially if it's a large group. Sometimes quantity really does seem to enhance the quality.

I've been doing a lot of cleaning and purging over the last few months, trying to let go of things I don't need and share them with others who might be able to use them. As I was going through my storage room, I came across several large containers of sewing samples made over a few years. It was a little sobering to look at all those projects, sewn up quickly and compulsively so that I would have a large enough supply of bright, shiny photos to put in my Instagram feed. I think I would rather stop sewing altogether than get back on that hamster wheel. Meaningful, enjoyable projects -- no matter how long or short a time they take to complete -- seem like the sane and happy way forward.

Life As I Know It

Now that we're a few days into the new year, I feel like I can finally sit down and write about the old one. 2023 was rough for our family, and while I'm thankful for the good things, I'm not terribly sorry to see it go. My father had three surgeries on his heart over several months, one being particularly delicate and serious. And then three weeks after his last surgery, I had a hysterectomy in an attempt to heal the anemia that I've been dealing with for years, the original health problem that forced me to take a break from professional sewing work back in 2020. It was, to say the least, a lot to deal with all at once. We spent months in recovery with some very difficult days, but the Lord brought us through it. Both Dad and I are doing very well at this point, in so much better shape than I would have expected, and we couldn't be more grateful for the dear friends from our church family who carried us through that time with prayer, encouragement, and lots of home cooked meals. 

In light of all that, there wasn't quite as much sewing as I'd hoped there would be in the second half of the year, but I did manage to fit in a few projects during the last few months.

A zipper pouch for a dear friend of mine...

A little quilt for a sweet mama who just had her second baby girl...

And the beginnings of a clamshell project using paper templates from the Etsy shop of one of my longest and dearest quilting friends, Erin of Why Not Sew. I have yet to sew these together, but they've been waiting for me on a wooden tray in my sewing room. I went with a breakfast theme in my fabric choices, an ode to my youngest daughter who loves the first meal of the day, and my plan is to eventually turn these into a pillow for our breakfast nook.

I have fabric for two more quilts on my sewing table right now. One will be a baby quilt for another friend who's due in early summer, and the other will be a graduation quilt for my eldest daughter who finishes high school in late May. It's such an interesting pairing, those two quilts-to-be -- the beginning and end of childhood in two stacks of fabric. I was sorting out the prints for my daughter's quilt the other day and was reminded again that life as I know it will be changing forever at the end of spring. This is the way it is, I tell myself. Every mother comes to this moment. It's good and right that our children grow up and become the independent adults we wanted them to be, and I wouldn't have it any other way, really. But there are moments when my heart cries...just a little.