Friday afternoon realizations

My husband and I are spending the Memorial Day weekend with family. We drove yesterday and will see all the grandkids tomorrow and Sunday, always a thrill to be gathered together. The weather is forecast to be sunny but not hot, a perfect combination of relatives and camaraderie.

A few days ago in the early morning I was seated under a lap quilt I did not make, but have mended. The quilt was a gift from my sister-in-law, in that it was a thrift store find that I fell in love with at her house and she gladly gave it to me, aware she had too many thrift store treats. The quilt required significant repair, so I patched it with my fave fabric scraps. Yet it was difficult laying those lovely prints over the painstaking EPP that was ages old, but starting to fray. The eight-point diamond stars were carefully designed, beautiful in their simplicity, but well loved, and perhaps partially bleached, the colours washed out in places along solid strips forming the borders. Still it's dear to my heart, in part from the English paper piecing, and for my own mark made by the repairs.

How many times have I sat under that amazing cozy, not thinking more about it than gratitude for the warmth. But on the most recent morning, I snapped a few pictures of the EPP inner stars, just because. What I found upon inspection brought relief as well as wonder; the diamond points aren't at all precise, meeting haphazardly in the star's center. Never before had I studied it so closely. Never before had I felt such thankfulness for it, mostly in the sense of, "How gorgeous is this and not perfect!"

Beautiful just as it is.

One of my favourite aspects of the Cornflower quilt was in stitching petals around the center octagon, not worrying if the points met up properly. In stitching six-point stars, I'm finding my stars are rarely on point, sometimes awkwardly. I'm not overly bothered, although a little annoyed at myself for not figuring out how to correctly meet the points together on a consistent basis. But now, seeing how these points don't match up at all, I'm allowing Future Me to do the best I can to align the diamonds, and the rest becomes its own beauty.

Future Me smiles, then winks. We're both relieved.

Past Me wrinkles her nose a little, but says nothing. Present Me breathes deeply; this isn't the only revelation I'm currently encountering. Reading over some of my older stories, I am embracing them as steps on my fictional journey, which is suddenly feeling to me differently than it has felt in a long time. My novels, old and new, polished and period, are like my quilts, gifts to whomever requires a cozy, be it tangible or virtual. I also realized about the fiction is that in my current series while I know the end, I have been hampered by how that conclusion will come about. Well guess what Present Me; that's part of the joy of writing. The journey itself, be it fictional or not, is why I do this, and what fun it will be to see how I reach The End.

 

Another star with a pretty patch.

I haven't felt that way in.... Maybe since writing The Hawk. After time, I knew how I wanted the story to wrap up, yet I rarely fretted about steps leading to that last chapter. It was merely the act of the storytelling, perhaps how my thrift store quilt was stitched. Maybe the diamond stars came first, then the attaching squares and triangles, the border at the end. How things end certainly matters, but getting there shouldn't be paralyzing. That how I have felt about The Enran Chronicles; certain aspects of this saga are firm in my mind, tickling my authorial fancy yet at the same time scaring the crap outta me because I don't know how I'll reach those delicious aspects. Listen here, Present Me; stop being afraid! Just breathe deeply, do other things until it's time to write, then know that JUST LIKE ALWAYS the muse will provide.

It always has and always will.

So with that, I wish you all a lovely weekend, holiday or typical. May you know joy, peace, and inspiration for whatever artistic endeavor awaits.