It happened again this week at sewing camp. Children ask to make a certain quilt block, and having made a few in my day I lead them through the process.
Trace this. Cut there. Sew along this line.
But the trouble with many patterns, is that nine tenths of the way into creating
it, it still bears no resemblance to the picture in the book. One girl last week expressed her doubts. She did not want to sound mutinous, but I got her unspoken drift.
This looks like a jumble. Are you sure about this? Can't we skip to the end?
I paused. I held her half finished log cabin block in my hands and looked in her sweet face.
"Can you trust me?" I was asking for a leap
of faith.
She nodded. I drew the next line for her, and she faithfully walked over to the sewing machine. After snack the block began to turn a corner. Although I never lost sight of where we were headed, for the first time she could see it too. She ran into the living room where there was a finished log cabin in a quilt on the wall.
"I see it! Here is the middle and here are the pieces around
it!"
We smiled. It was the encouragement she needed to keep going.
"How many more seams?" she asked.
I admit I fudged.
"Maybe eight."
I knew without counting it was at least twelve. But like a midwife who stands on the delicate line between telling a woman in labor that she is only at six centimeters
and luring her into transition, I lied.
By the time we had done seven more seams, she was excited enough not to reprimand me for my miscount. Even she could see how close we were. She was very proud of it when it was finished and so was I. There are not a host of eight year old girls these days who have made a paper pieced log cabin square.
Twenty years into it, most marriages still look like the back of a quilt block. Ragged edges,
dangling threads, paper scraps are less than attractive, and so are some of the interactions that happen behind closed doors. But the Creator who is chopping away at my ego has done this before. I guess I will make a leap of faith.
