This is the first quilt I made after my brain damage. I had been trying to figure out since 1989 how to tell which side of the fabric was the right side and the wrong sides because I knew you had to put right sides together in order to qult, or sew anything for the most part. I really struggled with this quilt that was to go into our new house we'd bought with these colors in the formal living room. I don't remember now if I bought these fabrics or had them in some stash of mine from when I had quilted before. I knew back then that I didn't want to do this quilt like my mom and grandmother had, with cardboard templates. I had watched quilting shows on TV over the last year and saw they were doing something called 'strip quilting' and that looked like a lot of time saving effort. AND to me, for myself , with my no energy status these days, it just seemed like the right thing to try. So I thought about the size of quilt I wanted, how many blocks I wanted by how many in length and started to rip the strips to the right width. Then I sewed the colors together in what I THOUGHT was the right way I'd seen on the Quilt in a Day show. Once I got those sewn, I put them in rows and started sewing the rows together into the main part of the quilt. I did it in a day and was so proud of myself. The next day I added the borders and then didn't know what to do for a backing so I grabbed a sheet that looked like the right color, layered it all together, pinned it and tied it on the living room floor, using embroidery floss I had from an old project. The next day I bound the quilt by bringing the backing over the front, pinned and sewed it and it was done! I was so proud of myself for figuring this out on my own and put it on the couch for the night.
When I looked it the following morning though, I realized I didn't do it very well, and knew I needed help in learning how to quilt properly, again. I could see back then and especially now all the mistakes I made in not matching corners, not using the right fabrics (don't use a sheet if its not all cotton, when every things is else IS all cotton in your quilts) and more. BUT for me that day was a celebration for me to realize that all I needed was someone to show me how to do it right and it would unlock more of what I hadn't gotten on my own.
I was still learning it was OK to ask for help, because I was relearning something. I still couldn't make clothes at all but here WAS something of my old life, that was coming back, albeit slowly.
This quilt is one that I still display proudly as a piece of my past, and to remind me how far I had come from 1987 as a bedridden mother, with a 3 and 10 year old daughter, incapable of most things needed to survive, and now I had in 6 years begun to create again! I felt so excited, even if that quilt had tons of mistakes... I HAD MADE IT, and that was a new milestone for me! Even today in 2011 I display this quilt on my quilt rack, though in the back of it, as a testiment to my craft, to my TRYING to do something right, and LEARNING to accept that SOME THINGS OF BEAUTY ARE FLAWED. AND I learned that in those flaws, THAT IS WHERE THE BEAUTY LIES!