Everyone seems to have their own way of tracking what they need to get done. I keep mine in my head…and buried in closets. Or I did until I moved to Europe and found that there aren’t many closets to hide unfinished projects in. Bummer. So I am forced to keep my dirty little unfinished craft project out in the open. Rubbermaid boxes stacked in corners like Martha Stewart’s Blair witch project pollute what was once an elegant library. Amazingly a lot of these abandoned attempts at creativity and domestic-goddess-ness have followed me around for over a decade. In several houses I have spent more time cleverly storing these skeletons in closets than actually trying to put meat on their bones. A fine line exists between my skeletons and to-do list.
Most of my Rubbermaids are stuffed full of very well organized quilt projects. Mum taught me to sew when I was five. Like many children raised in rural areas across the US, I did 4H. I loved it! I grew up in a home where Mum made most of the clothes. She made my kindergarten wardrobe with matching outfits for my Barbie. She even made my Dad’s suits. Mum was a teacher, and I always thought she would have been most happy teaching Home Ec, but she taught special math and second grade. She helped me through simple beginner sewing projects and by the time I was in third grade I was making some of my own school clothes. Rutabaga is in third grade now and that sort of blows my mind.
My maternal grandma was one of the world’s most special people. When she passed, a long forgotten piece of her patchwork came into my possession. It had been put together with fabrics made long before my parents had even met. Little hexagons that she had stitched together by hand now rested in my hands. The fabric was tattered around the edges and slightly discolored, but I was sure it was the most beautiful piece of hand work I had ever seen. I wanted to finish it, to have something my grandmother and I had made together. I did my research, a more difficult task without Google. The name of the pattern she had been working was, “Grandma’s Flower Garden”. That sealed the deal if there was ever a doubt. I spent time looking through piles of scraps and cutting hexagon sets, making my own flowers for my Grandma’s garden. Mum had been telling me all along that the fabric was too fragile to add on to, but I was intoxicated by the idea of this “Grandma and me” project so on I sewed. Flowers were crafted from a night gown Mum had made me when I was in elementary school. One or two were created with scraps from the Easter coat my Mum had stitched for a three year old version of me. Scraps of every kind went from taking up space to being beautiful blossoms. And then…nothing. It is all in a Rubbermaid in the library along with a half dozen other unfinished great ideas.
Hard to believe, but the number has actually been shrinking. About six years ago I finished five in one major push. I burned myself out with that go. I couldn’t even look at patchwork for a couple years following. Each project has been banished for different reasons. One I had no idea how to finish. The next, wasn’t looking how I thought it would when I started it. A couple needed help over a technique hurdle. Some were victims of hasty cleaning for guests. Adding insult to injury, Friends would give me their unfinished projects and fabrics when they had had enough. They are all lined up in little plastic quilt coffins waiting for resurrection day.
It may not sound like it, but I love quilting. It’s a creative outlet, just one that takes months upon months to come to fruition. I wouldn’t say I have adult ADD (some might, but I wouldn’t), but staying on track, focused, and interested for that long is difficult. I love working with my hands and there is almost a primal reward in creating something where there was nothing. They just take so blasted long!
About five years ago, while me and quilting were on a mutually agreed upon period of separation, I found cakes! The thing about cakes is, they have a time frame. Even if I don’t love the direction a cake is going or it doesn’t look just like I planned, I cannot very well put it in a Tupperware and pick it back up in a couple years. I have, at most, three-ish days. It turns out I work well with deadlines. Even though I sink massive amounts of time into each cake I make, it is mere moments compared with my last hobby. I take a photo. People eat. And it’s done.
It was the lack of closets that made the Rubbermaids weigh on me. Seeing them was stressing me out. So much time and effort had been put into each one of the items in the land of misfit blankets. Like my to-do list, my intentions for each project remained mainly in my brain. Then one day I got a wake-up call. Something unexpected and bad happened to a beloved man and it shook me to the core. Suddenly the thought of all the things I hadn’t finished, or done that I want to do, pressed on my heart. They outweighed the accomplishments and the armoire full of finished blankets. I had learned to quilt because of an unfinished project of my Grandma’s. True, but I was doubting I would ever have enough grandchildren to find beauty in my project purgatory. Tragedy turned into a call to action for me.
One by one the boxes have come upstairs. One by one I am finishing… I have two very close to completion. There is no bed waiting for cover in my home. In all honesty, they will likely go from finished, to folded in the armoire. Being innately lazy, I have picked the easiest ones to work on. The remainder of the boxes are pretty intimidating. All along I have imagined having a beautiful guest room to rotate the quilts through. To have one more beautiful than the next for each holiday, each season. Maybe our next home will be our forever house. Maybe it will have a guest room. Maybe it won’t. What it will have is a bunch more quilts.
Oh, and just so you don’t go all getting the wrong idea about me, I still live for heavy metal and poker. My friend coined the term “Metaliquilt” for my propensity to rock out while domesticating it up. My other friend refers to me as “Betty Rocker”. Yes, I am baby pink and black Neapolitan ice cream, and really, changing that is nowhere on my to-do list.
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