Making a Mighty Life

Okay, guys.

If you're new here, there's some quilts to look at. If you only care about quilts, or art, or books about quilts and art that I originally set out to write about on this blog...you might want to peace out for this post.

But I'm going to break some boundaries here and talk about something that I don't often talk about.

Anxiety.

I'm going to talk about this because it's part of who I am. I am a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend. I am a quilter. I am many things.

I have anxiety.

I hope it will help you see my work from a different perspective. I hope it will encourage you to be brave and talk to someone about your ugly parts that you don't want others to see. I hope it will maybe inspire you to make art or to write or to create despite the nasty naysayer in your head that tells you not to. Maybe saying it "out loud" on the Internet will also help me.

We make this life.

We only make one.

It's hard to make a mighty, beautiful, joyful, fun, brave life with anxiety.

I'm on antidepressants. I take Xanax when I feel like my body is going to explode in a million pieces. I do yoga to help me find a quiet place in my mind. I read every night before I go to sleep to fall into someone else's story and give my own a break for awhile. I text my friends or call my mom. I hug my husband. I quilt.

These things have generally worked and I am very thankful.

But I had to ask myself...isn't there more? Is there maybe something else I haven't really tried yet that might work better or differently?

I had my first session with a new therapist today.

I did this for many reasons. But the biggest reason is that I'm going to make myself better so that I can make a mighty life.

Her name is Amy.

She wore orange.

Layer Cake Lattice Quilt

Freedom! Summer! Sunshine! Naps! Quilts! Books!

Safe to say, I am living the dream.

Because I was doing too many things at once as the school year wrapped up, I hadn't posted my most recent finish. 

I took a class at Material Girl this spring and made the Layer Cake Lattice Quilt! 

Photo and Patchwork by E. Henning.
Free Pattern by Fat Quarter Shop!

This was my first experience using pre-cuts and I fell in love. For my non-quilty friends, this is not real cake but almost as good. Almost. 

Layer cakes are 10 x 10 inch stacks of glory containing about 40 squares or so. It made cutting so quick and easy!

I used a layer cake from Rashida Coleman-Hale's Moonlight collection that I found on Etsy. The colors make me think of bubble gum and unicorns and sleepovers and friendship and joy.

And check out the cute backside on this one...

Photo and Patchwork by E. Henning.

Pattern by Fat Quarter Shop.

Here's more eye candy. Enjoy!

Last Stitch

I turn the binding and sew by hand to finish my quilts and each time have experienced that:

The Last Stitch = All the Feels

*Excitement- whoa, I'm one stitch away from being done with this!

*Joy- colors and shapes and patterns and designs bring so much happiness to my life.

*Reverence- this quilt making is some straight up magic...I made a thing that didn't exist until now!

*Relief- holy crap, it took a long time to make that thing.

*Gratitude- I'm so thankful I have a precious human body with hands and a brain and eyes that make.

*Wonder/Awe- did I really make this?!?

*Pride- hey, look, I really made this!!

*Confidence- hey, if I made this, I can make other cool stuff!

*LOVE- explanation not adequate to capture this. 

I will share a photograph of the finish (maybe my fastest yet, done in 44 days!) once it stops raining and my model comes home. I have the house to myself tonight. So naturally, I will be listening to music too loud and cutting some fabric in my pajamas and eventually watching chick flicks under a brand-new, finished quilt. 

I also may or may not have bought a bottle of wine and a pint of Half Baked Ben and Jerry's...

Cheers! Saturday! Yes!

 

Sewing Space

If you are anything like me, getting to poke around someone's home is super satisfying to you.

I thought I would let you mosey around in our "office"...which, let's be real, is pretty much exclusively sewing space at this point.

Have a look around!

Ignore junk pile.

I love my OttLite so much I had to put heart magnets on it.
Ignore the weirdo stickers on the radiator in our rental.

Threads and rulers-- and pretties, of course.

WIP Over Here.

"Home is where you make it."

All of the neon labels and fabric stash bins
 (organized by color) are new as of last weekend. 

It makes the whole room feel more organized!

"Organization system" cost 8 bucks at WalMart.

Highly recommend it.

I love my Making Headquarters.

My machine is M.I.A. from the sewing room (oops, I mean "office") because it has been working hard on our dining room table finishing some straight line stitching. I decided to post the husband photo bomb edit because he really deserves a shout out for letting my fabric and pins and machine and quilts take over the house.

Bryan's blog debut. I can't look at this and not giggle.

Now, get outside! It's May! Go hug your mom! May rocks.

Time Travel

Do you get snippets of time in your day where you feel like you "go somewhere" without really going anywhere? Moments or minutes or hours where time seems to be transcended somehow? Do you ever experience that weird, freako, deja vu vibe? Do you ever fall face first in your work or your play and get lost there for awhile?

If you don't, I hope you start because it's a friggin' strange but awesome thing we can do as humans.

Mystery fabric from my ever-growing stash.
Weird and Beautiful. Kind of like time travel. And Life.

Recent Time Travel List:

• I am a speech-language pathologist in an elementary school and when I score standardized testing, write reports, crunch some therapy data, teach some kids...I am sometimes able to get in that Flow. I love looking at the clock thinking...where did that hour go? Oh yeah! I was in my hustle head space, doing my work. Cool.

• Alone in the house, I moved a bunch of furniture from the middle of our living room last weekend to make some space. I taped fabric to the floor. I smoothed wrinkles. I poked pins between layers of quilt. I chugged La Croix with loud music on. I. Jammed. Out. 

• A lot of times my brain is too full of garbage to "go somewhere" during this yoga pose but a few weeks ago I time traveled in Savasana on a sunny Saturday and it was legit (major understatement). Ommm to my Yogis out there!

• Last night I finished Modern Lovers by Emma Straub. Fiction novels got me like heart-eyes-emoji face forever.

• I walked in warm weather with my husband through my hometown that is now again my town where home is. Isn't it divine to think that Spring is strong enough to smell and you can walk around in flower fragrance for a short, special time each year?

• Scouring quilt blogs while scarfing lunch. 

• Cutting the ends off green beans before baking them in six cloves of garlic.

• Driving to Ohio with my mom, eating gummy bears like nobody's business.

• Hearing that machine hum, hum, hum under my hands....we're taking up the whole dining room table to quilt straight lines and squares this week, baby.

Make time for that Time Travel.

It's the good stuff.

A Quilt That Looks Like Me

Today is the day. On Facebook you go, Blog!

Here is my latest and greatest to get you newbs to think about sticking around or coming back.

Photo and Patchwork by E. Henning.
Pattern by Vonda Davis (Quilty 2016).

Photo and Patchwork by E. Henning.
Pattern by Vonda Davis (Quilt 2016).

In case you need a little introductory course in why quilts matter (and in this case, why they matter to me), this essay I wrote will maybe help. I entered it in a contest at the end of March. It didn't win. But that's okay.

My essay is personal. It is gushy. It seems like the kind of thing I would never, ever post on Facebook to encourage other people to read.

This crazy idea is Elizabeth Gilbert's fault. Have you read Big Magic?? GO READ IT RIGHT NOW. I'm going to review it on my blog soon. But it's a book for everyone. It's a book about Creativity with a capital C and it is seriously amazing. Seriously. It just might make you share your blog on Facebook with everyone you know. It can do crazy things like that...

Okay, wait! Maybe read this essay first before you dive into some magic with Liz.

Have at it, Reader. Enjoy.

***

This sixth quilt of mine is different. I fully believe in the giving of quilts and have found such unbridled pleasure in watching my girlfriends open boxes with handmade magic inside. I would never trade those countless hours of making for them. But this quilt will not be wrapped, gifted, or given. This one is for me.

I’ve named it “Mine” for now because that is the best way to describe how it feels. It’s made of bright, saturated rich colors that I like-- teals, reds, mustard yellow, and navy. Some blocks look like crazy joy, like happy nonsense, and others look like a quiet kind of sadness. This concept and idea is kindly borrowed from the one and only Mary Fons-- I made a quilt that looks like me.

I was initially looking for a way to burn through some beloved prints in my fabric stash. I wanted to include a large variety of designs and colors, while still maintaining a sense of structure to the quilt. A traditional nine-patch block was the answer. The pattern is from Quilty’s Fall 2016 Scrappy Issue and was originally crafted by Vonda Davis. Nine-patch blocks sit beside solid squares that help to anchor the quilt. I loved that the nine-patch blocks took a spin on their heads by being set within the quilt diagonally to create a different look. It was quirky but classic and maybe a little like me, I’d like to think.

Something unexpected happened to me while making Mine. I was going through a rough time to tell the truth-- feeling overwhelmed with the daily grind, handling a stupid bout of ugly anxiety, fighting those winter blues. In the process of sewing my 70 nine-patch blocks, I eventually experienced meditation through patchwork. Coming home after a shitty day, I would plop at my machine. That hum on my old-school Singer would drown out all the annoying things that happened. After sewing square to square to square, row to row to row, I would feel better.

I started Mine after Christmas, when the dreary days of January were just starting to gnaw at me. While cutting and sewing and pressing, I got this hammock idea. My husband and I have a great yard with big, old trees. I started visualizing myself in a hammock with this quilt (that wasn’t and isn’t yet a quilt). The meditative process of sewing and this daydream helped me dig my way out of a hard couple months.

Tomorrow is the first day of spring. My quilt has a lot left to go. I spent much of this morning assembling blocks to form the top corner. I haven’t picked out binding but got real obsessed with this solid pink fabric that makes me giddy just thinking about it. This quilt made me realize that creativity can change things. It inspired me to start a blog and take another quilting class. It made me realize that even the ugly days contain beauty when set in the context of my life as a whole, when looking at the entire quilt and not just that one dark, flawed block.

This April or May, I will swing in that hammock with Mine and a good novel and I will smile in the sun.

I did it. And I will keep doing it-- keep quilting-- because this making is making me.

Making a Wedding (An Imperfect One That I Loved Anyway)

Awhile back, I received an email from a lady who worked for Chicago Style Weddings Magazine. I was excited but also confused-- why would anyone want to feature our wedding?!

I'm still not totally sure of that...but they have featured us!

Photograph by Holly Donovan.

Click here to check it out!

My husband and I got married last June and had a very modest, simple wedding outside with dear loved ones. We didn't have a videographer. We didn't have a cajillion dollar photographer. We didn't have a chocolate fountain, or plated meals, or a decadent expensive wedding cake. I bought my dress from David's Bridal because I couldn't sleep at night knowing my bridal gown cost more than almost any other thing we own. My bridesmaids wore whatever they wanted for dresses and jewelry with simple guidelines to pick navy outfits that made them feel good. We didn't take fancy photographs in the hotel room before the wedding. 

Not that any of those things are bad!! But wedding industry B.S. makes it seem as if their way is the only way. 

It's not the only way.

We did it our way.

And we are still featured on a blog! Which is cool!

We made the day our own. 

I am still obsessed with our flowers. I loved my veil. The vintage pieces we rented from Forever Birdy in the Harvard Starline Building still give me goosebumps. Even though it was an undertaking, I made a giant fabric banner to hang between the trees in the park where we were married because I wanted something to hold onto in our home to remind of us of the vows we made. 

Photograph by Holly Donovan.

Many parts were perfect. And I thought I would want to wipe out or hide the parts that weren't. But instead, to prove that nothing on the Internet is exactly perfect, even when it looks that way...I'll share some secrets.

There were unexpected PortaPotties in the park that were in the frame of view when my family and myself walked down the aisle. 

It was HOT. It was in the 90's, sweating your head off, kind of hot.

We cried like freaks. Like snot-nosed, ugly-cry. Tissues were necessary, not optional.

Weddings aren't perfect. And either are marriages. It made realize that the things people make and post on the Internet might seem perfect but indeed actually have flaws, too.

So for the posts I write that seem just "perfect", please kindly remember, I might have had to move a pile of dirty laundry first or crop out empty beer cans. 

Big Duh Moment Here: Life is Not and Will Not Be Perfect.

I lost the Mary Fons Essay Contest. The blocks I whipped out like a madwoman are not quite exactly 10x10 like they're supposed to be. Instead of proofreading this five times like I normally do, I'm just going to hit publish. 

Because here's something I've figured out-- sometimes it's the act of making, that moment of making when you are IN IT that matters more than what everyone (including yourself) sees afterward.