It is beneficial to live in the present. This beautiful June day. These people beside me. This quilt in my lap.
But a remembrance keeps resurfacing about my sewing teacher from middle school. She was hard to please and pressed me to redo seams, and rip sloppy darts. Her insistence on following the Simplicity pattern down to stay stitching was unyielding.
Today I cranked out twenty blocks. They are whimsical birds, in a rainbow of colors. They have personality even in their simplicity.
It is not because I am particularly amazing that I can chop eight layers at once, piecing as many wings and beaks inside of an hour. The scrap baskets on the shelf offer a wide palette of colors, and pairing them in each bird is part of the fun.
The thing is, it is history that informs my current project. The hundreds of pineapples, and log cabins, and Irish Chains in my past give me momentum for this endeavor.
Which fills me with gratitude. You see I did not know in 1970 that I would be creating a bird quilt in 2022. What I made then was important too, though I am not really sure if my mother actually loved the brown wool cape I gave her for Christmas. I don't recall her wearing it. But in the process of sewing plaid skirts, and flannel pajamas I learned how to spread yardage across the table and end up with a garment worth wearing. Several, in fact.
As it happens I want the birds to enjoy being part of a parade across my quilt. Hence the relief to have a long relationship with pins and thread and buttons.
It turns out that at least some of the ordinary directions that we follow line by line show up thirty years later when we really need them.
