Pressing (and revising) takes longer than sewing (and writing)

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What a colourful little quilt this shall be!

I'm nearly halfway done with the above quilt top; three and a half inch squares are futzy, also mindless. Six rows are currently stitched together, another two waiting to be attached, that leaves nine left, which I'll tackle this weekend. But I am taking special care while ironing the seams open, spritzing them with my spray bottle to make sure they lay as flat as possible. That's a plentiful amount of open seams for the back, and smoother is better when I make that quilt sandwich.

Yesterday as I stood at my ironing board, pressing and pressing and pressing, I considered how so much time is spent standing there as opposed to sitting at my machine. If I'd been told that when I first started quilting, I'm not sure I would have believed it, lol. Then I pondered how writing is similar, at least for me, in that a first draft spills from my brain onto the keyboard, but much effort remains to shape it into something I'm comfortable publishing. Quilters don't often talk about how many hours they linger at their pressing stations, but I bet I'm not the only one to come to such a conclusion.

I don't use the steam function on my iron, in part that Humboldt County is already so humid, I'd worry my iron might get icky inside. Instead a water bottle lives near the ironing board, but in the last year or so I gave up spritzing as I pressed seams, not sure why other than it was ONE MORE STEP in the pressing process and at that point I just want to SEW and not IRON. Maybe I've mentioned how when I began quilting a decade ago (fodder for another entry) I didn't even own an iron. My daughters thought I'd been taken over by aliens when I told them I was getting both an iron AND an ironing board. But even then I had no clue how many hours I'd be standing at that board. I just thought I'd sit at my machine, blithely attaching one fabric to another, the mystical ironing fairy sprinkling special dust on the seams. I was such a novice back then, again fodder for a later post. And the same could be said for how I got into writing.

Ten years of quilting, over sixteen of noveling; that's a chunk of time spent doing things I love. Which includes ironing and editing, although I like editing more, but I can't excise either from their respective pastimes, so pressing and revising go hand in hand, in a manner of speaking. Books and quilts don't magically pop out of thin air, but anything worth doing well requires behind the scenes efforts that aren't flashy or glamorous. We don't see all the training athletes endure, only what they exhibit on the court or field. But they must enjoy it as much as I love reading over a story for the umpteenth time or yet again placing the iron over seams, guiding it slowly so adjacent seams aren't disturbed.

Little tricks of various trades that I have come to appreciate as much as the thrill of awesome prose or pretty fabrics placed side by side. I'd much prefer to stand at my iron than train for a marathon, just saying, but that's what makes me happy. Grasping the necessity of all parts of whatever hobby or joy keeps the perspective where it belongs, that nothing worth doing happens overnight. With that, time for me to get to some revisions, hehehe.

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