Saturday, March 29, 2014

What Price Peace?

There is a saying that peace at any price doesn't give genuine peace. Genuine peace comes from making choices that create more life, not less. And so it is with quilting.


I have been working on Baylee's graduation quilt for some time now. It really seemed like it would be done this week.

All the hearts were hand quilting, and a straight line of hand quilting went through the middle of the second border (batik). It is my intention to run a Serpentine stitch at the closing seam where the Prairie Points are just to ensure their closure.


Not sure if the photo picks up the subtleties of the stitches that are meant to blend in with fabric colors. As it laid flat, I could see that batting in the last border could easily shift. It was not really anchored going through it. Package instructions say to quilt it every 6" and technically with the quilting in the second border, it should work. It wasn't.

A 'finish' at any price in this case, was not going to provide me with a genuine finish. Leaving it and calling it done, would someday bring cause for concern. Baylee might never say anything, but if the batting bunched, it would ruin the entire look of the quilt. All the work in it would be lost and only the unlovely part would be noticed. Its how we are.

The invisible ink pen is spent, so I will buy another one when I go out today. I've pinned places on the outside border where another heart needs to go.

A 'genuine finish' will happen on this quilt because I am making a choice to give it more life not settling for less.

Any Work In Progress (WIP) seems to drone on, even for the quilt-maker. I worry sometimes that people will think that I repeat myself as a sign of aging. Its not that. There are endless steps to making even one quilt and if a quilter has many quilt projects like I do, they tend to talk about them all and think about them, planning the next steps. 

Does a quilt-maker just stop sharing? Does she make peace at any price by not sharing? How is it we learn genuine peace?  My quilt-making brings a lot of internal issues to the forefront for me to consider. Its not just about piecing or pinning or cutting. 

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