Doing Something Difficult

I believe I told you about the quilt I was working on. Way back...  Nope, not the one from August 2012. Haven't touched that one. Okay, I can't find the post with this particular quilt. But I feel like I did tell you about it. In December or so of last year. So, a year and a half ago.

Well! I finished it!

And, like typically happens when you try something still pretty new and kind of difficult, I learned some things about myself.

Well, and I learned some things about that minky fabric that feels so nice. Spoiler- minky fabric is so very horrible. Because it stretches and makes everything uneven. Ugh. If you look at the quilt from far away while someone shakes it, you can't tell how uneven my rows truly are... so we'll still call that a success.

{Quilters out there- you may want to shake your computer a little so your quilting sensibilities aren't assaulted by the pictures of my quilt.}

I hadn't touched this project in months. The front was almost completely finished, but I still had to quilt and bind it. And so it sat in a little bag in the closet of the sewing room/office, all sad and lonely.

See, first, I was busy. For a couple of months, balancing home and work filled up the majority of my time, and quilting simply wasn't a priority. We've all been there, right?

But secondly, while I really enjoy quilting, it's hard. Well, at least, for me it is. You're probably a pro-quilter, rolling your eyes at me and my minky troubles. But for me, a novice with almost no experience, it's hard. So I avoided it.

We had a group of quilters here at Camp one weekend, and I remembered the lonely quilt. And I thought maybe I could ask for some help or pointers or something. Something to make it easier. So I quit avoiding and finished up the front (which isn't perfect, but is the part I struggle with the least), and brought the whole thing to the ladies to beg for suggestions.

Do you know what they told me? They said I did a great job, and that I was done! My little creation was ready to go off to be quilted by a professional.

I had planned on quilting and binding it myself, and when I told one of the quilter ladies that, she said, "Oh! That part is really hard." 

I ended up taking the quilt home, and I finished the quilting and binding myself- and the project that was in limbo for a year and a half was all finished in three days. Why the sudden determination?

She said that what I was doing was hard, 

 and She told me I was doing a good job.

That made all the difference. See, just the fact that I was validated, that someone with experience and know-how told me that I was doing something difficult, made me feel like maybe I wasn't so incompetent. Like maybe I wasn't alone.

What a wonderful gift of community- to feel like we're not alone, to be told that we're doing something that's difficult.

That can really make all the difference. Being acknowledged like that can give us strength to keep going.

So, if you know someone who is having a hard time, tell her so. A teenager fighting to stay pure? A newlywed figuring out the "marriage" thing? A woman with a newborn? A work-outside-of-the-home mom? A stay-at-home-mom? That's hard! Tell her. It may help her keep going.