For some it is music, for others getting out in nature, still others enjoy pets or a hobby. Each of us has our own way of restoring peace. My places of refuge are my quilting and writing, and I used both liberally this year, trying to achieve equilibrium. This diary describes the quest I’ve been on. It’s kind of long, so I thank you in advance for taking the time to read.
This year was hard for me. Near the beginning of the year an important friendship came apart abruptly. As I tried to make sense of it, I wrote a lot, some for me and some to share. For me, some of the first words I wrote were these
"it was broken, shattered, pieces all pieces sharp and bright. And then pieces sinking into the water deep and swallowing it down and dark, pulling the pieces darkly into the deepest, coldest, loneliest places."
At the time I was working on my son’s graduation quilt and had just finished assembling the top, still to be quilted. Technically and mentally it was a challenge, with very little satisfaction between design and completion. (I wrote about some of those challenges here.)
Though quilting usually is a positive experience for me, this one was not for other reasons, as well. Besides the happy symbolism of Son’s adulthood and his impending entrance into the Air Force, the quilt became imbued with sorrow, the grief and guilt I chewed through as I tried to resolve what happened with my friend.
My next project, the red and white “Hunger Quilt,” didn’t improve my joy in quilting. In many ways it was more difficult. My local guild had issued a challenge to create a quilt in two fabrics, one red and one white. This was a challenge in every sense of the word. With more piecing than any project I’d done so far, with the limitations of two fabrics, with the desire to quilt it heavily with feathers, it tested my abilities. While I am happy with how it turned out, I didn’t enjoy the process.
One of the challenges with these projects was the sameness. For the graduation quilt, there were two block styles. Forty “A” blocks and 41 “B” blocks, but each A was the same and each B was the same. For the hunger quilt, all 20 blocks were the same, and worse yet, only two fabrics, and only two patch styles.
There was not enough to occupy my mind.
As I stitched and assembled on these two projects, the spaces of my mind not occupied with my task filled with the broken friendship. Quiet time was not quiet but noisy, shrieking with questions, trying to solve the puzzle of just what happened. I turned again and again, running through all I knew, all my assumptions, all my guesses. There was no resolution, but the attempt for it pulled me into a pit of anxiety that shortened my breath, tightened my chest, and increased my heart rate.
