The message is one of perseverance. In the beginning we realize that what we have made is not that good. I can relate.

My first quilt was a gift from my sister. She offered to help me make one, not by doing it for me but by footing the bill for fabric, and the first book in my now extensive library. I was delighted. Yet in retrospect I am chagrined by what I sewed. It was velvet and velveteen houses, a pattern I still love to use. But the sashing was canary yellow polyester, the kind I would now use as rags for changing oil, not to put on my bed. The squares were snipped with my mother's scissors, which were also used for paper and pipe cleaners, and quite crooked. I embroidered the windows with flowers, in a quaint sort of shabby chic way. The colors were garish with no coordinating theme. It was tied rather than quilted, a difference that was lost on me at seventeen. 

But I loved it. 

I kept quilting. Now I can try something challenging like a One Block Wonder, or a Pineapple, and see it through. I read books, take classes, watch videos, and most importantly I sew. 

There are photos of some of the quilts I made for wedding gifts in the eighties, and I cringe to see them. A few years ago I went to visit a high school friend and when she showed me the quilt in her guest room that I had made her thirty years ago I wanted to toss it out the window. I restrained myself and went home and made her a Star of Bethlehem. With matched points, coordinating fabric and machine quilting. 

I wrote songs back in high school too. Some of them endured but others were a bit like jingles, like you hear on commercials. Not exactly musicianship, but I kept writing. For a long time. 

Marriage begins at the far side of that gap. We have a mental picture of a relationship based in mutual respect, companionship, trust. But the trouble is we have not worked at it yet. We got along with our college roommate, in a live and let live kind of truce, and we survived childhood without actually pulverizing our little brother. But generosity is not taught in higher education. Sacrifice is seen as an archaic practice from the Old Testament, not a here and now way to serve. 

The only road to the other side of creativity, or quilting, or songwriting, or marriage, is a lot of effort. But the joy of finishing a Stained Glass Window quilt is more satisfying than anything I can pick up on sale.