I've been thinking about the process of my quilt. I know I've posted a lot about it lately, and you all might be sick to death of it, but I have learned some lessons.
I started out with an idea in my head. I had my picture of the dolphin. But I didn't want it to be lonely, so I went looking for some fish for him to play with. I looked in a different area than I did for the dolphin. I was a bit lazy and wanted somebody else to have a pattern that I could follow. I found some nice paper piecing patterns and got busy making fish. I had fun picking out the different colors and fabrics from what I already had. I started putting my blues haphazardly around my fish. And I really liked the effect. After I had my fish all sewn, I realized I had made a mistake. And that mistake would affect the rest of the quilt. I had originally decided to cut my ocean into two inch squares. But the randomness of the blue surrounding the fish clashed with the orderliness of the grid I had originally planned.
So my ocean morphed into a crazy, hap-hazard, willy-nilly placement of blue. I found I didn't like the straight edges and so I started cutting biases. The problem with bias fabric is that it distorts easily. And it is extremely difficult to get and then keep a straight line. But I pressed on, a bit obstinately.
I would run into a problem, and then I would create a solution. Most of the time, I was able to find something that would work pretty easily. The implementation of the solution took more time, but it worked. For example, I would cut stripes of blue and sew it together and then cut that fabric into bias stripes (across the grain or diagonal) and sew those together. The bias sections would have short sides and long sides. When I tried to sew those sections into the quilt, I would have holes in the fabric where the short parts didn't fill in the space like I thought they would. I would then un-pick those seams and sew in a small piece of blue. Some of the holes were less than one quarter of an inch. But if I had allowed the raw edged of the fabric to stay loose in my quilt, it would have weakened the construction and it would have looked terrible. So the ocean is full of tiny patches that I had to sew in one at a time.
Once I had some ocean patches done, I sewed my dolphin in. I sewed him in crooked, and had to unpick him and sew him in by hand. I started the ocean at the top with the light blue and moved down to the medium blue and then then dark blue. On the bottom right corner, I could not get the ocean fabric straight. So I tried just sewing in a wedge of fabric to square out the corner a bit. I cut the wedge to shallow, and had to add an additional wedge. I became sick to death of the ocean and decided it was good enough and started the fun applique. I appliqued in the seaweed and added the borders so I could applique the octopus. Then I put it on the bed so I could admire my quilt.
A huge mistake. The length of the quilt was good, but the width of the quilt was off. It was too short. Way too short. I scoured the inter net and found the fabric I needed to fix it. But I hated the fix. I stored the quilt away with the additional fabric. It was just too hard to think about. I started other quilts. I finished other quilts. I thought about my lazy solution. And with all the work I had put into the quilt, I realized that I would have to take off the border opposite to the octopus and add a 6 - 8 inch patch in the ocean and then sew the border back on. I would have to add a patch to the top and bottom of the border to make it work. And then I started a fresh quilt, because it was easier to sew something right from the beginning than to go back and up-pick the borders and sew a patch and fix my mistake.
After I got my Christmas quilts done, Craig decided to say something. :) He told me that Josh had watched me sew other quilts while his quilt was waiting to be finished. It was now time for me to finish my son's quilt. So I pulled it out and finished the appliqued crabs. That part was fun. And then I sewed three more fish so the ocean patch wouldn't be empty. And I started on the ocean. I hated the ocean. But it went much smoother and faster than I had dreaded it would.
I unpicked the border and cut it.
I sewed the ocean back in and reattached the border. But I had twisted the border and had to up-pick the entire thing and start again. The border didn't match the way my math said it would, so I appliqued new seaweed and a sea horse and some sea stars. My friend, Janet, said I needed to stop adding sea creatures and finish the quilt. I laid it all out and realized I had a parallelogram quilt. My corners were so far from square. My heart fell. I didn't know how to fix it. Craig came in and asked what was wrong. I told him and he knew how to fix it. Using principles of carpentry, we squared up the quilt and I sewed the borders on. I was so happy.
But then I noticed because of the bias ocean I had a bubble of fabric in the middle. The corners were square, but the middle of the quilt had too much fabric to lay flat. My friend, Loretta, had told me that quilting could fix that. But I knew I didn't have the machine, or the ability to quilt the fabric down. So I determined to pay somebody to quilt it for me. I went over to her house and looked at pictures of quilts she had done. I looked at the quilts on her walls. I got up real close and saw the evenness of her stitches. I showed her my quilt. I showed her the bubble and asked if she could tame it. She said yes, it wasn't as bad as she had seen. She did not have any misgivings about my extra fabric.
I left the quilt at her house. She said it would take about a month to get to it. I started a new quilt. I thought about un-picking the dolphin and re-appliqueing him down. But then I thought about the seaweed and the fish. The dolphin would mess up the whole pattern if I did that. And so I left it there at her house and worried that the first mistake that I made, way back when I was making my fish had ruined my quilt. The quilt that had taken two and half years of my life to make.
My lovely quilter called on the last day of school. The quilt was ready. I went to get it, hopeful and scared. It was beautiful. My heart sang and my soul danced. The quilt was saved, it was perfect.
I brought it home and my husband, who wondered at my decision to pay somebody to quilt it, saw the quilting and understood. All the mistakes are in the past, and I am left with a breathtaking quilt.
Now, the point to this post.
Sometimes in life we make a mistake that influences the rest of our life. We have no choice but to keep going knowing that our lives could have turned out so differently. We had to abandon our original plan and have the constant reminder of our mistake as we make countless minor adjustments. Still trying to stay as close as possible to our original goals as we can. It takes us longer to achieve our goals than we planned. And sometimes we despair that we ever will achieve them. We think see others sprint ahead and we are still stopping and fixing mistake after mistake.
We know that the Atonement is the answer, but really how can the mess we have made ever be fixed? How can the beauty come through all the errors and pain? And we know that the path we are on is different than the one we should be on. How can this path reach our destination? Sometimes we give up for a while. Sometimes we need the loving encouragement from those that love us to keep at it. Sometimes we need the little reminders that we are off on little distractions that might be fun but that are not the important things. Sometimes we need the knowledge and ability of others to show us the way. And then we present our best effort, knowing it is imperfect.
And Christ takes our best effort and he fixes it. He erases the things we could not fix and makes something beautiful and wonderful out of our offering.
I have recently read from the Doctrine and Covenants this verse that has stayed with me for more than two weeks. "Is there not enough room on the mountains . . . that you should covet that which is but the drop, and neglect the more weighty matters?" (117:8) I have been evaluating what the drops are that I have been coveting.
Sometimes, we believe in Christ, but we don't believe Him. In Isaiah He says, "Is my hand shortened at all, that it cannot redeem? or have I no power to deliver?" (50:2) Do we think that the scars will be healed from our bodies, but our spirits will still bear the scars of sin?
I have had a glimpse of His patience for us. A glimpse of His power to save. And I stand all amazed.
