Changing Focus

 

I feel so much joy this morning.  The clouds sweep through the valley with a purpose leaving a beautiful blue sky.  The temperature sores upward to dance in the forties.  The essence of who I am is changing.  How can it not after losing a son?  I have been told I will never be the same since Michel died.  But who am I going to let myself become?  In December, I felt I would be angry for life.  January brought the inevitable sadness.  I don’t want either of those things to be with me.  February has been a roller-coaster but mainly depression.

This past week, I thought about meaning and legacy.  Since about September, I have been working at finishing my mother’s legacy.  I dived deeper to runaway from my grief once Michel died.  I got a little angry that I was spending all this time finishing my mom’s stuff.  I need to be me, not her.  So, while I thought, I worked on a project that I started years ago.  I don’t know what it was going to be, so I decided on a baby blanket.  At the same time, I worked on one of her projects because I can’t waste all the material and half-finished things.  I can turn them into something.  That IS who I am.

Of course, I also thought of Michel.  Where is my relationship with him?  I have my mom in the quilting.  I have my dad in gardening, fishing, and the outdoors.  I have my father-in-law in my birdwatching.  What do I have with Michel? 

My emotions have been too big to face alone; yet, I haven’t wanted to burden my family and friends.  I know, I know.  They all want to help, but I didn’t want skewed thoughts from others who have their opinions of me and the situation.  I wanted someone outside of the circle.  COVID has made that very difficult.  Two weeks ago, I saw the clinic’s therapist who gave me a name of a therapist seeing people in person.  Because of both these amazing ladies, I have been able to open the well of feelings.  On Friday, my new, permanent therapist gave me the safety net to explore my life as a mother to Michel.  For now, I am feeling better.  I am sure I will have some relapses, but right now I am good.  Tired, but good.

While in my deep despair, I thought I would quilt for the rest of my life.  Hiding in my quilting room felt safe.  Now, I have been going out and about.  I knew and know I need to go through the motions.  I have been so busy.  Everyday I have something to do with friends and family.  I know they have been helping me immensely.  I have my stitch group, art people, sushi gang, game night kids, Bible study sisters, and my partner in crime who lives in the neighborhood.  I am so very blessed.  In the last two days though, I am getting ready to leave the quilt room.

No, I am not going far.  In fact, I am only turning my chair around and moving it a few inches to the computer.  I have started journaling again.  I am going to start working on my memories and other grief related ideas.  I am excited because it feels good.  It feels heathy to be back in front of the page.

I knew I would leave the room for gardening, but I am leaving the room next week.  Okay, I will if my surgery goes well tomorrow.  I have to go in for a biopsy.  If I have healed enough, I am going to tear apart the pantry.  The plan is to declutter, clean, and paint.  After that, I am going to tackle the living room entertainment area if the pantry goes well.  If not, I will hire it done.  By the end of March, those areas are going to look good so I can rest with that and hit the gardens, weather permitting.

Yes, I will continue to quilt.  My goal for the year is to finish up a total of 36 projects.  I have accomplished eleven.  I may not make the 36, but even with just the eleven, I have put a dent in the piles.  I do love the quilting.  I just don’t want to stay in the quilt room quite as much.  My focus needs to change.  I need to find the new me.

Here are the two projects I worked on last week.  I still have more sashing to go, quilting, and the border.  I may or may not get them finished up this coming week or two.  I will definitely post them when I do. 

Green

 

Green was the theme.

Last week, I enjoyed finishing up a quilt that I designed from a picture on Pinterest that I found.  I struggled with the green fabric.  I need to go look at the bolt to see what type of cotton blend it is and compare it to other fabrics.  I might be avoiding that type in the future.  The rest of the fabric came from Mom’s stash of strips of fabric.  I still really haven’t put a dent in that pile.  Luckily, I have found other Pinterest pictures to inspire me with other quilts.

 

When I found the top of my next quilting project, I was excited.  The shamrock material and St. Patrick’s Day theme convinced me that Mom was working on this for Kim.  I debated trying my hand at appliqué with the left over fabric I packed with the quilt face.  I worried thought that I would ruin the piece.  I found felt shamrocks.  I started sewing one onto the white block, but I hated the cheap look to the shamrock.  So, I played with stitching a shamrock.  It worked!!!  I loved the way it turned out.  My sister also likes it.  Yay!!!  I will send it to her later this month.

 

This week begins Lent.  I have a bunch of projects I want to do for our ministry at church, but I also want to hit Mom’s piles.  I am not sure I will get anything completed this week, but I will be busy sewing and crocheting for the ministry and Mom.

Wall Hangings

 

My blog seems to have morphed into a quilting blog instead of a hodge podge of all my interests.  I guess that is to be expected due to the nature of my life at the moment.  Last week as I quilted away, I experienced sadness and uncertainty.  I struggled with the loss of my son and faced a biopsy which I will know more about later this month.  The ups and downs of life are difficult but seem even more so during the winter months.

I am excited February arrived.  I am not a fan of this month, but it shows that January is behind me and spring is that much closer.  I am already excited about gardening season and warm weather.  Alas, I continue to fill my days with my mom’s project.

This last week, I worked on two of her wall hangings.  The only thing left on both of them was a little bit of quilting, blocking, and the binding, simple in many ways.  I still had a little to learn.

My mom must have loved to hand sew.  I am not a fan.  When I pulled out both of these projects, I groaned when I saw the hand sewing needles with thread attached to the material.  She was hand quilting both projects.  I might eventually do some hand quilting, but with all the work there is to do, I prefer fast and machine quilting.  I started with the Christmas wall hanging.  The middle block was almost done.  Just one small section needed to be hand stippled.  I did that up quickly to finish the block. 

I turned to the top and bottom blocks.  She had used a pencil to draw where she wanted all the stitching to be done.  On the top, she had crisscrossed lines.  Easy enough.  I finished that up in no time.  On the bottom block, she wanted parallel lines around the design, but stippling up close to the design.  The lines were no problem, but I didn’t want to do all that stippling by hand.  Really, I think it would have been silly.  Her machine does that stitch in two different ways.

I grabbed some throw away fabric to practice on.  The machine stitch was terrible!!!  No wonder she didn’t use this programmed stitch.  I hated it.  Now, over eighteen years ago, I tried stippling with a free motion foot on my machine that I had at the time.  I grabbed Mom’s free motion foot, switched the feet, and played.  The process came back like I did it yesterday.  I took a deep breath.  The first area went without a hitch.  Within about thirty minutes, I finished up the quilting.  Yay.  Now, I can see an issue or two in my work, but nothing that most people would notice.  I blocked the piece and put on the binding.  I am pretty happy with the results.  Oh, I had to hand wash the lines off the material where my mom drew because they could be seen.

 

The next project, I am sure Mom would be annoyed with how I finished it.  On the right and bottom, she chalked where she wanted to put the word WELCOME on the hanging.  I am sure she planned to appliqué the letters.  I am not ready to get to appliqué.  Besides, I think I want to keep this piece and didn’t want the words on the piece.  When I blocked the project, I just cut off the extra fabric.  I also had to wash off the markings. 

 

All in all, I am happy with both projects.  I relearned stippling.  I continue to marvel at how I approach sewing so differently than Mom.  Also, I prefer pins over stitches.  With the before picture of the birdhouse, the stitches to hold the front, middle, and back of the stitch had to be cleaned up.  I prefer using the quilting pins instead.  Of course, I have been quilting for less than a year.  Maybe when I hit Mom’s status, I will be doing this stitching thing too.