06 | December | 2019 | Writing Spool

I made a patchwork quilt. It was something I had intended to do for a very long time. A very, very long time.
After laboring to get all the patches cut, (from thrift store shirts), then pieced together and the batting and lining combined with the front and then all the layers stitched together by stitching the patches in their ditches by machine, I stitched one side of the finish binding by machine then did a blanket stitch, by hand, all the way around on the reverse side so that there wouldn’t be a visible machine stitch showing on the binding on the outside. I counted the stitches as I went, but I forget now how many hundreds of stitches that it took to get all the way around four sides.
It was a great sense of accomplishment.
To say the least.
Not to mention finally getting to the quilt at all after all those years of wanting to.
Then I started doing a simple running stitch to outline-quilt the pattered pieces and planned to do French knots in the plain patches. I got quite a few completed before deciding to procrastinate doing all the others.
I still love the quilt and use it as it is, knowing that there is a needle in it somewhere that still needs to be picked up to finish the rest of the outline quilting and to add the French knots on all of the plain patches.
I wonder if I ever will.
Get stuck by that needle.
It’s still beautiful and warm in its incompleteness and it’s a constant reminder of how easy it is to want to give up before the end of something. Maybe it will taunt me enough to follow through.
I keep moving on to what I think are better things or just other things I want to do.
Or, I get bored.
Or I simply realize that sometimes toiling for a thing just because you thought you wanted it — if it doesn’t bring joy — it might not be a worthy endeavor and it might be okay to quit.
Maybe it just needs to go away for a little while because it was becoming way too all consuming.
There is only so much time and it might have been enough of a feat just to get that far.
A friend said once that I wasn’t going to live long enough to do all of the things that I was constantly adding to the to-do list. She was right.
But it helps to have those things on my mind to help me want to get up for another morning and I used to think it was a clever trick to think it would mean life would go on until I finished it all. I no longer think that’s clever or true — so, sometimes I give things up now.
Sometimes all we’re doing is trying to keep from going crazy.
Sometimes it’s okay to sit and stitch. Other times it’s better to go out and garden or to visit with a friend.
It’s never good to be too all consumed or have too many other patchwork projects in the patchwork project queue.