Life has just been a little cray cray lately.
I have been working on a wholecloth quilt
the past couple of weeks,
it is not for anything in particular.
Just because.
I just pieced a few pieces of white fabric together
to make a pretty stinking huge quilt. I haven’t measured it
(because I didn’t really plan it out to begin with)
but I am pretty sure it is close to a king size quilt.
I chose to do it so big because I normally make quilts
that really are not even big enough to snuggle under.
I am so used to micro-quilting
and so I wanted to do a micro-quilting styled quilt,
but not so…
well,
micro.
I feel like this quilt really stretched me
in ways that were sometimes uncomfortable.
There were some failures
as well as some victories.
Because this quilt didn’t have to be perfect
or even really all that good,
I had a lot of time left alone with my thoughts.
And call me a weirdo or whatever
but I found quite a few parallels to life
within my quilting.
Sometimes,
in life,
Things just don’t line up like you want them to.
Sometimes things don’t head in the direction that you wish they did.
Life brings a tension headache or two.
(You see what I did there? With a picture of terrible thread tension?)
But you know what?
When you take a step back,
sometimes things just fit together
the way they were always meant to.
But you have to step back,
you gotta stop focusing on all the little mistakes,
all of the
coulda
woulda
shoulda’s,
and appreciate things as they are,
instead of how you wish they were.
It’s important to remember that everyone has their own set of battles to fight.
Some are just more noticeable than others.
Everyone is trying.
Everyone is learning.
And when you can do those things
(I know I need plenty of work on ’em)
It becomes easier to see the beauty
that is all around us.
It is easier to be tolerant,
and appreciate the good we see in others.
Easier to recognize people’s faults
and choose to look past them.
And simply see that…
LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL!
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And don’t you forget it.
Be great to each other!
-Karlee
34 thoughts on “Life is Beautiful.”
Somehow I missed this post…. Thanks for all of the pictures and wonderful parallels. It’s so easy to focus on the small things that don’t go the way we’d hoped, when really the big picture is truly a work of art.
Awesome! Thx for the reminder to always choose the better path! Your work is inspirational!
Thanks Michele! I was happy to share 🙂
I truly ‘love’ your quilting! I am a micro stitcher, a little too micro most times, and I love it. I am happy to see others who just ‘let it flow’ and do not try to design each quilt section before they begin. I tried to think of things a few times before I began, but never could stick to it. I love free hand quilting on my HQ. I, like you, just let it flow. Whatever feels right. In the beginning I ripped out an entire quilt because I was not happy with it. That quilt top still sits in my stack to be quilted, after about three years. Your words and inspiration are much like mine now and I appreciated all you said. You put it beautifully! Quilting is an art of our feelings and life. I used to ‘rip out’ everything that was not perfect, like the eye lashes… lol… now, I will look at them as a sign of beautiful eyes fluttering at me as I look at it. Like life, never perfect, but always beauty in it if we only look for it and not the flaws. As days, some are better than others, but all are good! Thank you for being such an inspiration to all of us! I am so happy HQ posted so I could find this. Have a blessed quilting life as you spread encouragement to us all. )
Thank you Linda! That is great insight!
What a beautiful whole cloth quilt & inspiring message! You truly have a talent for both artistic quilting & writing! Thank you for sharing your work!
Awe Marion! Thank you! That means a lot to me! Thank you for reading and posting.
Wow, wow, wow – love your quilting – thank you for sharing, Karlee. Now, I need to sit down at my SS16 and see what I can produce 🙂
You are so sweet! Thank you so much for reading! You can do it! Just go for it!
Love, love, love this fantastic Improv Wholecloth!! WOW! Thanks so much for sharing it with us and with HQ (else I wouldn’t have found you!).
It’s really beautiful…
Karen
Karen, seriously that means so much to me! Thank you for the kind words! 🙂
This is so gorgeous – those little mistakes (my quilting mistakes – this piece is so beautiful) really niggle at me – and you are right – you have to let them go – but how? Copious amounts of wine & chocolate? Valium? Dark sunglasses? 😉
Hahaha I have found that I just have to chant my mantra “it’s just a bit of fabric. it’s just a bit of fabric. it’s just a bit of fabric.” And that allows me to let go. I sometimes get so wrapped up in the temporal aspects of life, I become a pack rat of art supplies, even if it is for a medium that I don’t really use. haha. But, I just try really hard to focus on the intangible things I get from my quilting, and not the quilt itself (experience, emotion, and the joy of others when I give them handmade gifts)
p.s. chocolate always helps. That is a given. 😉
I used to do the same thing with ink pen on paper when I was in middle school and high school. Fellow classmates would pay me to make creations with their names in and amongst the designs. Neat to see something similar on cloth.
That is so awesome! Honestly, that is where 99 percent of my skill comes from. You’ll never catch me without a sketch book. 🙂
You have just blown me away, not only with your quilting, but with the life parallels. You are one wise young woman. Thanks for being a great inspiration.
Taos, thank you so so so so so so so much. That means so much to me! I appreciate you taking the time to read it and comment. 🙂
Simply wow!
Thank you for reading! 🙂
Wonderful work with me many times to sit down and just sew sewing machine to sew the clouds fly freely like a bird party and we were a fabric Party.
sounds fun! 🙂 Thank you for reading!
love it 🙂
Thank you so much! I appreciate you taking the time to read and comment. 🙂
thank you, I would not be afrait to tray after this 🙂 Thats is beautiful work. Freyja
Good! Don’t worry, at the end of the day, it is just a piece of fabric. I have to remind myself of that all the time. 🙂
That’s a lot of wisdom right there! Beautiful words, beautiful quilt, beautiful perspective.
Thank you so much for reading, Linda! It means a lot to me!
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I love love love this quilt! Even more, I love your perspective! What an inspiration.
Thanks Andi! I hope it wasn’t too cheesy! hahaha
This is so very beautiful, both in your creativity in your sewing & also in your words. Did you use your long arm to stitch this, or your conventional? Also, wondered if you did it freehand or your sketched it before you did the sewing. I truly love your work & the words were so very fitting. Thank you so very much for sharing.
Thank you for all the kind words. Yes this was done on a longarm quilting machine. I didn’t do any sketching or anything like that beforehand, I just left my hands flow and the fabric was my canvas. haha I really really had to stop caring about lines and perfect shapes to let the designs flow as freely as I wanted them to. It was a really good experience in learning to “let go” and just stop caring about the end result and enjoying the ride.
Magnificent work Karlee, just love it!!
Thank you soooo much!:)