I’m Going to Do it!

For as long as I can remember my mom has been sewing, painting or creating something to beautify our home growing up. Over the last 20 years she has created quilt after quilt. We had quilts for our weddings. Every new baby in the family has a quilt.  She has quilts that she makes for humanitarian projects, quilts for sisters having babies in her church, and quilts that she’s just made and given away because she felt like that person needed a pick me up and needed to know that they were loved and thought of. They are always gorgeous and she has become a master at it.  She just finished the cutest truck one for Isaac that I’m in love with, and always has about 4-5 more to show me every time I go home.

 

There is one that she made years ago that is a blessing quilt.  It is darling and has her individual blessings and things she is grateful for throughout the whole quilt. Every time we go home especially at Thanksgiving when it’s out on display, we always comment on how cute it is, and just how awesome it is to have all those blessing documented. 

We decided that it would be fun as a family project with all my sisters to create our own blessing quilts and work on it slowly as a monthly block quilt.  We’ve got the pattern for the first two months and I’ve been thinking how much I’d like to make it, but just haven’t gotten started. I’m intimidated honestly. I wasn’t sure if I’ll be able to follow directions, I am so obsessed with colors that trying to pick out colors that I was in love with was scary and it just wasn’t getting done. 

About a week ago my sister posted her first few blocks she got finished up on our family blog encouraging all of us to get started on ours. It was what I needed. I decided that instead of going out and buying new fabric I’d use what I had on hand, and started digging around seeing if I could find some that would match each other and look good. I ran across this print, which I fell in love with a while ago. So I started trying to match the colors, and before I knew it I was in love. These colors are sooo me. It finally felt like my quilt, not the designers quilt, not my mother’s quilt, not my sisters either. It was my quilt with my interesting color choices and bright colors. I was pumped.  I needed to pick up a few more greens and some blue since I didn’t have enough, but I was ready to go.

So after the kids have gone to bed, I have sat down and began following the instructions. Learning how to cut and sew my squares, and beginning to create my blocks.  There is a bunch of appliqué and embroidery which I’m excited about because I LOVE doing that.  It took about the first two nights to realize why I have not become a major quilter.  I am not one for having to have perfect exact measurements. After lots of mistakes, wrongly cut fabric, sewing wrong pieces together, and ending up with finished blocks that were a 1/2 inch smaller than they were supposed to be; I realized this quilt just might be the death of me.  But I’m determined. I AM going to finish this. and I AM going to do it right.  
So I’ve been thinking about what kinds of blessings I want to record on it. I decided I wanted it to be a record of these last 8 years here in Provo at BYU. Our first 8 years married, the start of our family, being poor starving college students and record the many blessings we’ve received the years we’ve been here. I want to pull this quilt out 20/30 years down the road, or 50 years down the road and remember the incredible blessings we had here, what a foundation these 8 years was for the rest of our life, and remember how happy and wonderful this time of our life was.  Life has been good to us these 8 years.  I am really excited about this project, and hope to show you the bits and pieces as I put it together over the next year. I hope that by next spring when Beau walks across the stage graduating with his Doctorate, that this quilt will be a memory of our time here as we get ready to embark on a new journey. 

I’m also hoping that my other sisters jump in on the project too. It would be so fun to all get together and show our finished quilts together with mom’s.  Five different styles, five different color choices, and five different sets of individual blessings and things we’re grateful for.   Five records of how good our lives really are and how much God has blessed us.  So for now I’ll be working on it one block at a time, learning patience and how to slow down and make sure I’m doing it correctly the first time.