There’s a lot going on here. Lots of beginnings but, as always, nowhere near enough time for the middles and the ends.
I’ve rounded up (squared up) some neutral and tea-dyed scraps for patchwork pieces, which will be a quilt eventually. (Cream pieces on a cream rug – someone tell the photographer the artist could have made this easier. Oh hang on, that’s me. And me.)
Patchwork, for me, is always about finding or defining connections. Puzzling things out, making sense of things, piecing things together from a few clues. The joining of fragments, little flashes from the past, collecting memories into one place. Because we are our memories, to a certain extent. When we lose the ability to remember, our sense of self feels less secure because the thread that holds us between past and present is broken. We end up losing ourselves along with the unremembered experiences. I think of patchwork as a kind of holding together.
I like to piece patchwork in the evenings while watching TV or listening to music. Nice relaxing thing to do.
And that would be fine, except there’s already a nice relaxing evening job in progress. I either have to finish that before I can get to the patchwork, or I have to put that down (again) to work on the piecing.
If you’ve been with me a while, you might recall the beginnings of A Long Life, which has become the current evening project. I started it a couple of years ago and have been picking it up and putting it down ever since.
It’s about six inches wide, and when it’s finished will contain 30,000 stitches. I have no idea how long it is – I won’t measure it until it’s done – but I do know that currently it carries 18,788 stitches. Yes, I count them as I go along.
I change colour for every decade (every 3,500 stitches or so) and change thread for the start of each new year. Factoring in leap years, when it’s had its thirty-thousandth stitch, it will represent the number of days in the life of someone who is just over 82. I have no idea why I’m doing this.
On top of that I have a couple of other possible big projects whirring away in the background, one of which might be a new online course on zero-waste stitching (aka Using All the Scraps).
Definitely playing a game of Tetris with time here. Move one thing up to make room for another thing, and so on more or less indefinitely. Good job I like to be busy.
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I love both ideas!
thank you. If only I had more than two hands…
Invite a friend to share some joining…or even a couple …what memories that would make …but no wine….👏
ha… I’m teetotal so wine wouldn’t even occur to me 🙂
I like these.
thank you 🙂
I love the idea of using the parachute for your long life project. Today is the 80th anniversary of D-day…I think your project is a lovely, even if it wasn’t consciously intended, tribute to those who served.
thanks so much, Carol. I’m mostly guessing (and hoping) that it’s parachute silk. But yes, a kind of tribute as well…
I also like to keep my hands busy all day stitching, but your projects are out of my capabilities! I usually have to work on one thing at a time until it’s finished. I can’t wait to see the finished puzzle piecework. 🤍
That’s a far more sensible approach, Pam – one thing at a time would be much better 🙂
Ah, but sometimes a project is being Difficult, and then it’s good to turn your back on it, and work on something else!
I like the look of the cream patchwork – which is odd, because generally I’m not keen on monochrome!
aha, yes, that is true.
I find the older I get, the more I like the calmer/neutral colour palette…
A long life is an incredible project! 😀
thanks so much 🙂 Just over halfway through. It really is having a long life.
of course we none of us know how long our lives will be, but the idea of 30,000 days. it seems exhausting and both too much and exhilarating and not enough.
as to why. did you ever hear of a book called Cheaper By the Dozen? it was written by two of the adult children of Frank and Lillian Galbraith who lived at the turn of the century. he was an industrial engineer / time study expert and she was the first female industrial / organization psychologist. anyway they had 12 children and they did some interesting things around teaching their children outside of the classroom. one was putting up a grid that held 1,000,000 squares because “people talk about a million all the time, but few people have actually seen it.” (paraphrase)
your project is really reminding me of that. people talk about the numbers of days in a life time, or just generally a lifetime. but how many people have seen a physical representation of that? it changes something in you.
Name should be Gilbreth. I’ve misspelled it.
that’s so interesting, Em, thank you. I’ll look up the book. Funnily enough, I’ve always wanted to make a patchwork of a million squares but it feels totally unachievable at this point in my life. And yes, 30,000 days feels a bit like schroedinger’s cat – simultaneously too many and not nearly enough, particularly when you spend a third of it asleep. The scroll so far is pretty amazing the way it just keeps going, and it’s not done yet. I think it is changing something. You are very wise.