Mama Told Me There'd Be Days Like This

A couple of days ago, I started a small baby quilt for a friend.  I had finished a big beautiful queen quilt and was feeling pretty proud and happy and thought, take a few hours and knock this little quilt out before you start the next big project.  So with joy in my heart and a small pile of pieces I started sewing. Well, if you call using your seam ripper more than your sewing machine sewing.  Every step of this quilt went south.  I had measured twice and cut once but wound up cutting again and again, every little thing seemed out of sorts with the next.  Really, could it really be this hard, it's a baby quilt... I first started to get a bit grumpy and the grumpier I got the more seams needed to be taken out.  I was sewing with a friend and she kept making jokes about it and we'd laugh and then I would tear another seam out.  I finally got one row of this quilt done and took a breath.  A big breathe.
Quilting is really a reflection of life.  You have all these pieces and you see how you want it to be and you start putting it together.  Then, you put two pieces together that shouldn't be and you have to take it apart and try again. Maybe even more than one time.   Let's face it, you take it apart a lot over the years, but eventually you start to get it right and the pieces seem to be putting themselves together and before you know it you have something beautiful.  You forget about all the times it seemed like a pile of scraps laying all over the place and the times you kept saying why why does this keep happening and you just look at the beauty that is right in front of you.  Ok, so maybe you don't forget the scraps and the whys but without them you might not have gotten where you are now and after all, in the end isn't that what really matters, that you didn't give up, that you laughed at yourself a bit and keep trying.   That you became friends with your seam ripper and learned to appreciate it for the amazing tool that it is?
So Mama, I just wanted to say thank you for teaching me how to sew.