Over the years I’ve learnt the kind of making that really fills me up; that sustains me and makes the mundane of the everyday richer, lusher, more alive. And so lush-thoughtful-timeintensive-making is something I try to have going on in some form as part of my daily making practice.
These projects are often slow. Case in point is the wedding quilt shown in the photo above. It’s known as the wedding quilt because it uses scraps from the clothes we wore to our wedding - and other outfits that have been part of our life over the last twenty years.
I started it over three years ago. Three years!
But now, after all this time, after all this work, I am in the final stretch. There is just one edge of the quilt to hand bind. That is 200cm. Or about 300 stitches.
Even seeing that written out like that makes me nostalgic and sad and glad.
We have so many of these endings in life. The last few days of school holidays. The last few pages of a book we love. The last weeks before a move from a house that has been a place of joy. The end of a relationship with someone we know we don’t want to be with but love.
Experiences where we are simultaneously grateful for what we have had, and yet sad because of what we are about to lose.
And finishing a big project is a loss. Yes there is beauty in the use but it is a different beauty on the other side of this point of discontinuous change.
We are no longer able to pick up the familiar comfort of the possibility available to us in the stitches. We can no longer sit in the grace of the space - and instead in time have to find other projects that may or may not fill us up in a similar way.
Part of the nostalgia for me this time feels exciting. To know that I’ve developed as a maker and am no longer in such a rush. Grateful that I’ve evolved in my practice enough …
- To allow the process to happen over time.
- To not whack myself when things aren’t happening as quickly as I believe they should.
- To realise that I adore just having the project sitting there as a possibility - where I can see my hard work past and future. And know that there is more to be done.
- To give projects breathing space.
- To not panic when things aren’t going in the “right” way and to have some faith that with some time and perhaps some thought or restructuring I can still head in a direction I’m happy with.
- To know that a big project that takes time won’t kill me. That I have the skills and the capacity and the stick-to-it-ness to get the job done.
- To feel excited by the process and the memories that are created as I do the making.
But also to understand that sometimes there is a nostalgia to the project that means that I don’t want it to finish. That sometimes finishing isn’t the goal of the project. That engagement is, because the joy of engaging with something so special and all of the memories that inherently arise is a big part of the “why we make”. We make to connect and to have support in walking through our lives.
Even when I’m not actively working on this project - which has happened many times over the last few years when there is so much going on in life whereby picking it up isn’t possible - walking past it is enough. Seeing it there as a possibility, witnessing its beauty is elevating.
The beauty of use. To see these two live with their quilts brings me ongoing everyday joy.
In this moment I am actively avoiding the finishing. Allowing the lingering sense of engagement to linger. Sitting in the gratitude for a few more weeks. Avoiding the inevitable fracture that comes with being done.
And yet I’ve just realised that as I sit here typing I’m smiling. Nostalgic smiling, for the end that is about to come.
Do you feel this? Do you finish projects you love slowly? Feel the nostalgia of the end?
Felicia x
