This has been a crazy year! I love quilting, but I found last year (2020), I needed to move away from quilting. I cannot quite explain why, but I just felt if I continued to quilt, a part of me would get lost. I began to work on my End of Life documents. I simply don't want to be left indefinitely on a life support system. It is that simple. I truly enjoyed a Bible Study on this subject. I found it greatly uplifting in a difficult season of lock down. It was freeing to me. That document came together very well. In January of this year, we purchased our burial place. All of this gave me such a sense of freedom. I know this all sounds crazy, but it was a great way to spend 2020. No, I'm not ready to die yet, but death will come one day and I just feel at peace about it. This was an awesome project.
Early this year, 2021, I returned to quilting. I needed something to keep my hands busy. I own an Electric Quilt 8 program. I began to design a scrappy quilt and decided to piece it by hand. I still spend a lot of time in the house and it simply felt like I would be more productive and not just sitting. The inspiration for this quilt was some lessons on Civil War Fabrics by Barbara Brackman. As she taught on fabric, we were suppose to be working on Sawtooth Star blocks with the goal of learning about fabrics while finishing a quilt. I never started, but it seemed like the perfect project. So I began in March sometime. This is my design from EQ8...
This is the finished center without borders...
I'm so excited to be this far along. It may be a while before I get back to the borders, I have some clothes I need to work on. But I do need to get back to this soon. The first border will be hand pieced, the others will be done by machine. I know that seems like a cop out, but the fact is, this quilt will be machine quilted. I love machine quilting!! And my hands are not as strong as they used to be.
My plan for the next year is to finish up this quilt first, maybe second or third. Then I have a stock pile of quilt tops to be quilted, at least ten. That's my plan for 2022. If I get part of this list accomplished, I think I will actually have really accomplished something!
