.becoming and becoming.

January is the perfect season for slow stitches. I find myself squeezing in time to finish the quilting on this lap sized quilt I'm calling "becoming and becoming." Not for the need to finish it quickly but the need to be in the meditation of stitching. 

It's been a very slow project, starting with the hand dyed indigo cotton from over a year ago. I knew when I dyed the yardage I wanted to include it in a quilt. It's such a beautifully rich color. A quilt is something the quilter has to spend a lot of time with, so you need to find joy in the fabrics and indigo seems to be a color that just pulls me in.

In July, after my slow stitching class at the guild I knew I was ready for some hand sewing. I pieced together a tiny little log cabin square of indigo and white. I imagined a quilt of nine or twelve smaller log cabin squares but when sewing machine broke, I decided to let that be a creative invitation. So, by the time I added the fifth layer of the first square, I decided to keep building on the one square,  hand sewing alternating strips of indigo and white. After a few more layers, I allowed myself to release further into the project, letting go of the classic log cabin style, allowing improv and chance to design the quilt. If the indigo exceeded the length of a side, I cut it and continued onto the next side, disrupting the balance of the pattern, until suddenly I introduce bright yellow triangles illustrating the radiating/expanding energy of intention of the quilt - the forever process of becoming. 

This is my first fully handsewn lap quilt. The project has taken months and has been picked up and set down over and over again until finally layered and pinned up by the end of the year. That was my goal, to fit the quilt into 2024, perfectly lining up for a slow stitch project of January. I think this should always be my plan because the big canvas to stitch on feels like salve for the cold and dark soul of winter. 

To find the sweet meditative rhythm of holding all the layers together - round and round and round - until you read the edge and at that point I'm planning on adding an electric yellow/green stitches in a larger circle. 

And then I found this poem online, which seems to give words to all the feelings of a slow stitch and finishing this slow quilt in January.