Kitty Windows

Day 290: Handwork on the kitty quilt is proceeding much more quickly than I'd expected. By bedtime last night, I'd sewn a total of ten prints into their frames, a total of six for the day. The quilt has 72 "windows" to fill, so even if I only do four per day, I could be done in under a month. To me, this is the fun part of making a quilt: hand-sewing. I find machine work tedious and monotonous, words which I've heard many people use in reference to hand-stitching, ironically. A cozy, homey feeling accompanies sitting with a piece of fabric in your lap, meticulously placing each tiny stitch so that it is almost invisible. As you watch the project develop beneath your hands, a sense of pride in your workmanship wells up and you find yourself striving for perfection without being conscious that you are doing so. Memories rise: a patient grandmother teaching a four-year old to "go over four threads and back two" to form a perfect stem stitch on an embroidered handkerchief, or putting three winds around the needle for a neat French knot. The hours slip by, and the forty minutes it took to sew one print into its frame seems negligible when balanced against the prospect of your work becoming an heirloom to be passed down through generations, or hopefully so. I find myself wondering: have I done enough handwork that one piece will survive into the next century? Will something of my stitchery endure beyond my time on the earth? I'd like to think it will.