Enjoying the process

Last night, after a series of mishaps (including my cat feeling the need to pee on my unwrapped quilt batting), my mom and I basted my Strawberry Pie quilt on her ping-pong table. Ping-pong tables are priceless for quilt basting without crawling on the floor!

It's really going to be cute when I get it finished, but I was totally flustered that I had to un-baste the sections after the machine quilting fiasco with my machine and then put the top together traditionally.

Now, I will be hand quilting it. So, my deadline of taking a finished quilt to Silver Thimble is totally not going to happen. That really bummed me out.

Then my mom said something very insightful. She casually mentioned that I used to be totally "into" the process with my quilts. That it was fun to make them, even if I did work fairly fast to be finished. Now I was working as if it was a job and not for pleasure at all. I loved the finished quilts, but not making them. She had a point and it stung a bit.

As I am not one to sit a UFO aside for an unlimited amount of time, it's not like I am going to totally fail to finish one. But, as mom said, "however long it takes to finish it is how long it's going to take. No point in rushing it, just keep working on it."

It's true. I know it is. I guess I put my quilting aside for years while I went to work and therapy with my aspie. I missed having a creative outlet more than I knew. Now, I am afraid that what little time I have to work on things may be taken away from me again and I have become a bit obsessive about that. That doesn't make for a relaxing hobby.

I didn't realize how much I was allowing quilting to add stress to my life instead of allowing it to reduce my stress, as it had always done for me in the past. So, I am hand quilting this one and it will take however long it wants to take, I guess. And that is going to be okay. I am even adding a bit to the design I had planned so it will add a bit more durability to the blocks over time. I figure if I am putting the time into it, I am not going to do the minimum job; I will do it right.

As for the future, I know that I will have to replace my sewing machine at some point. When I do, I will buy the most quality that I can and I will invest in taking machine quilting classes again so that I can be certain that my machine and I will mesh. Then, I may try it again.

Or, I might not. We will see.