Twenty Some Years in the Making

Dear...
Yep.. yes.. I can enter this in a contest for the longest to finish quilt.I started this quilt for my daughter Samantha when she was just two years old. I took a quilting class at a local shop. Ahhh as a young mother I had visions of quilting by the fire and was dreaming of having quilting bees at my home. Well, heck.. twenty years later and this poor thing still was not done. (Samantha all of 24 years old.. now!!!) The really sad thing is this little bugger was completely done by hand.. using scissors to cut the fabric pieces.. no rotary cutter for me. and hand stitched each piece. Then hand quilted using wool batting.. big mistake.. it was so hard to quilt. I dragged this quilt in and out of my life for years. Finally the quilt was complete.. except for the binding.. and it was so dirty.. you can imagine... sooo guess what the fiber expert did.. yep she put it in the washer.. some kind of brain clog due to the shear excitment of a near completed project.. Welp.. for all of you who are gasping at the thought of an oh no.. not wool in the washer.... yep.. it shrunk into the sadest mess you could have ever imagined.. I am the kind of person who does not cry easily.. but when I start.. you cannot stop me.. all those locked up tears just flow out in ocean waves.. I have never been one to cry over "spilt milk"..but shrinking this quilt.. TIDAL WAVES of tears.. I called my fiber in crime friend Kathie P to come to the rescue because she always does.... even when I am lost in my car I call her and she and Bill get out the maps and redirect me... well this time she hugged me over the phone... not much you can doooo.. Waaaa.. I took every quilted stitch out.. and I marched over to Kay' house with the long arm quilting machine and said "fix this now!!!"
I gave this quilt to my daughter this year for Christmas.. I do not know if she will ever know all of the trial and error that went into making this quilt.. I do believe however, that the projects I work on always connect to the "fabric of my life". This quilt represents the trials and the errors and the steadfast love that I have had being a mom..Always wanting to do the very best for my daughters..not taking any shortcuts..even if it meant using tools that took up more time... by golly it is worth it..there will be no stone unturned...because it comes from the heart.. making mistakes along the way.. sometimes huge ones.. but never never giving up.. even when you have made ones innocently ..always having good intentions..(shrinking arrrgh) a huge mistake.. you just don't give up and you try again .. sometimes you have to take it to someone else to fix.. (Like God).. and you see with patience and steadfast love.. things do get mended... the quilt gets complete.. another memory embraced and life moves forward... How simple our lives would be if we could fix mistakes by taking out stitches and starting all over again.. perhaps that is what we need to do..
blessings to all
Bee