In the last stages of my pregnancy with Edith, I was having severe problems with carpal tunnel and couldn’t work very long on my usual projects of choice. I could only handle knitting and intricate drawing for a few minutes at a time before my hands became painfully numb.  So, obviously, another kind of project was needed (I can’t just not make stuff for a while, apparently).

I dreamed up what I thought would be a simple yet beautiful quilt for our new little one and got to work sewing it.  The trouble is that I don’t sew very often.  I’ve made a handful of things, but designing the quilt and then using it are my favorite parts.  The stuff in the middle (the actual making) I’m less comfortable with and excited about.

I bought a jelly roll of rainbow colors for the top of the quilt and sewed them all together in rainbow order. Very simple. However, between my own pregnancy brain issues and silly mistakes as well as problems with my sewing machine, I had to sew every seam at least twice.  Lots of unpicking. But then finally it was done! Hooray! And I was on track to have a beautiful rainbow quilt before our little one arrived.

When the time came to square the edges, I cut it so lopsided that the discrepancy was visible from space.  I am still trying to figure out how that happened.  I was so frustrated both with myself and the quilt that I put it away until my angel mother-in-law (my go-to sewing expert) could help me fix the problem.   She squared the quilt for me while she was here helping after Edith’s birth.   During the sleepless nights and hazy days of newborn life it sat in my office ready to be finished.

I pulled it out again last week and after a few more mistakes and a few more sewing machine issues, I borrowed a machine from our sweet neighbor and finally finished the quilt.  I quilted it on the machine by sewing down the middle of each stripe of color using a medium gray thread. Then I unpicked many seams and redid them.  I placed the quilt across the room and squinted at it and decided it was good enough, as long as you don’t look too closely. Then I vowed to never sew a quilt again and placed the burden of reminding myself of this vow on this very imperfect but finally finished quilt.