The patchwork quilt that started it all

Well hello there.   I’ve finally arrived in blog land.  Nice to see you.

Please forgive me, I’m starting this journey a little late.  And from what I’ve read, blogging is a thing of the past.  Micro-blogging is the way of the future. Apparently that’s all our speed-craving, hyperactive, easily distracted brains can handle.

But I don’t think so. I think the bloggers who write that are just tired.  I mean, they’ve been doing it for years, right?

I believe we’re all inherently voyeuristic.  We all still want to occasionally slip into someone else’s reality for a few minutes. Of course the quickies offered by twitter and instagram are fun.  But not always.  Sometimes you want to sit down and stay awhile, right?

So I leap into this world of blogging, like zillions of others, primarily to document my journey through a world that’s new to me.  For myself, for my family, for the community I hope to find.

The baby you see at the top of this post is Emerson.  She’s turning one soon, and she’s my fourth baby.  She’s a daily delight.  There’s nothing better than lifting her out of bed in the morning and breathing in her sweetness.  Watching her brother and sisters crowd around her and vie for her first laugh of the day is all a mom needs to see to be reminded that goodness and love still dominate the world.

And now that I’m not feeding her every two hours, and I’m getting more than four hours of sleep each night, I can start to think about the next direction I will take in my life.  It’s funny, but she’s an integral part of the thing that has pushed me toward something new.

During the early months of my pregnancy with her, I felt an undeniable urge to make something new every day.  I couldn’t ignore it.  It was exhilirating and exhausting.  It was nesting on steroids.  I hadn’t felt anything like it during my other pregnancies.

That inexplicable creative burst of energy was so powerful that it shoved me through the doors of a fabric store.  It forced me to buy a quilting magazine and an armful of fat quarters (I had no idea that’s what they were called at the time). I strolled quickly through the isles of Hancock fabric, pushing my sleeping two year old in a stroller, confused and desperate to pick colors that lit up the pleasure center of my brain before she woke up.  I had no idea how many I needed, or what I would do with them.

That night at midnight, I attacked the fabric with a dull pair of scissors.  The next day my quilting friend Brenda came over and handed me a rotary cutter and mat, and shortly after, my first patchwork quilt was born.  Exactly three months before Emerson.

Technically speaking, it’s a mess.  I think there are four matching points in the whole thing.  The patchwork is what you pro-quilters out there would call, “unbalanced”.  And the pale pink border?   Yeah, that was actually white to start (hello, Color Catchers, wish you had introduced yourself earlier).

But I love it.  And so does Emmie.