Designing

Today is the birthday of a friend who died a year and a half ago. I have had people I love die, but I have never felt grief like this before. The pain hits me less often, but when it does it is unrelenting – feeling the shock over and over again. She just isn’t alive – she isn’t here – she isn’t coming back.

As I started to book things on my calendar for this week, every time I would see “Laurie’s birthday”, I would have to choke back body-shaking sobs – ending up in the bathroom at the office more than once to avoid embarrassment and awkwardness. I have been a puddly crying mess. So I made the decision to take today off to allow the grief to happen.

So I spent the day crying and sewing.

Laurie’s favorite color was purple. And mine is orange and every gift she gave me was orange in color. Gah. This is so hard.

So, I had a grand vision of making a purple and orange quilt today – soup to nuts – to donate to Project Linus. It didn’t go as planned.

I sorted my scraps, made a design, cut cut cut, made the first row and was very unhappy with the outcome. I didn’t like the setting squares and strips and I really should have used white squares instead of low-volume squares for the corners of the blocks.

I got rid of the setting squares and did a new row and like it a bit better.

But then it was 4:30 and I was frustrated. I decided to try a new project I have been thinking about a lot. An interpretation of a Paul Klee painting. And it just like flowed. Something about the grief and the frustration and I found inspiration.

I can’t describe how much I love this. The design, the colors and the total brick stitch are ticking all the boxes. But most of all this doesn’t look like anything I have seen before. It feels new. It feels creative. And my mind is swimming with all of the other types of abstractions and color combinations I can do.