final stitches

i've been working on this binding for a week or so. soccer season is over, so i don't have practices or games for handwork time anymore. but lately we've been doing a couple of sessions of listening to books on audible, which has given me a chance to hang out with the family and keep my hands busy at binding. i do enjoy reading aloud to the family, but sometimes i want to be able to listen, too, and not just be the reader. enter audible. it's been great. i can be with the kids, listen to something i like, and do my handwork. win, win, win.

currently, one group of us is listening to a charmed life, a chrestomanci novel, by diana wynn jones. this is a great fantasy novel for all ages that i've read a few times and have now introduced to the kids. the reader's britsh accent is ever so much better than mine, which makes the listening that much more fun. friday evening the three youngest girls and i listened to most of the book instead of watching movies like we normally would on a friday. they can move their bodies around and do whatever quiet thing they want while we listen. and i can, too.

another group of us is listening to the girl who drank the moon, a new find by kelly barnhill. this is another wonderful read/listen that i can't recommend highly enough. the writing is almost like poetry and i love the message of the story. a beautiful story beautifully told. on saturday night we found ourselves wanting to do some listening together with the addition of dad to the company, so i got some more time to bind.

normally, i try to do handwork as a secondary activity while i'm involved in something else with the family. but today after church i had only about a foot left of this quilt and everyone else was busy elsewhere. so i enjoyed some quiet stitching time, just feeling the rhythm and pull of needle and thread, soaking up the afternoon light, and sitting with my own post-church thoughts.

a friend and i were joking yesterday about how our great-grandmothers tisked and looked askance at sewing on sunday. we'd both been scolded, "when i was a girl. i was told any stitches i made on sunday had to be removed with my teeth on monday." we figured that sewing was a chore and necessary work in their day - work that was to be rested from on the sabbath. with all due respect to previous generations, to us a little handwork while enjoying conversation with family is not chore work, and perfectly acceptable on a sunday.

putting the final stitches in a quilt i've worked on over a long period of time, 2.5 years in this case, is always a bit surreal. to be actually done is rather astonishing. quilts really do get done a stitch at a time. if you just keep putting those stitches in when you can, even if it takes months and months, with gaps between sessions, eventually you have a completed quilt.

and here we are.

the final stitch.