I haven't been able to post for a couple of days because that ol' Naomi made me help her clean out our sewing closet.
She thinks that when I'm excited about a new project, I'm careless and messy when I go in there to get fabrics and supplies.
I keep trying to explain how hard it is to be all painstakingly neat and tidy when your hair is on fire about something.
She just doesn't get it.
Anyway, we cleaned out the closet.
And now she thinks I shouldn't be allowed to start any new projects.
She says I never finish anything.
Because we found this:
It's a true scrap quilt started 20 years ago for one of the male Shoots.
She thinks I ought to finish it, since it's made from the scraps of fabric she used to make the family's clothes.
She says it would be nice to have it for the male Grandshoots to use when they visit.
We also found this:
This is a king-size quilt top in the hen-and-chicks pattern.
I made the quilt top 16 or 17 years ago...before "the big move".
She thinks I ought to finish this, too.
For the king-size bed in the guest room.
I told her these things take time.
And then she found these:
A nice fat stack of nine-patch blocks from a project I started a year ago.
It was abandoned mid-way because of a change in circumstances.
And by that, I mean Miss Helping Hands moved out of the dorm room with the green carpet.
Naomi thinks I ought to find new vision on this and get it done.
I told her, "Gosh! I just started this one last year. It needs to age."
So she moved on to these:
A big stack of hand-stitched stars made from the scraps of all the clothes she sewed for Miss Helping Hands when she was still a wee lass.
She really got on to me about this one.
She laid out a bunch of the stars, like this:
I told her this is not how it's supposed to look.
It's the Seven Sisters quilt pattern.
She just said, "It doesn't matter what the pattern is."
"You did all this work. You really need to finish this one!"
She says it would be a great gift for Miss Helping Hands someday when she gets her own home.
I just said, "Yes, it would."
"Some day when she gets her own home."
She sighed.
Then she found these:
A much smaller stack of hand-stitched pinwheel quilt blocks I started making out of Miss Mary Mack's clothing scraps.
"What?!"
"Why didn't you finish this one?!"
I told her I had realized I would never finish enough of those little, tiny, blocks to actually get a quilt done, so I had changed to these:
These are much bigger patches in the 'spinning spools' pattern.
At this point Naomi got very quiet.
And it made me feel kind of bad about myself.
She silently finished the closet-cleaning project and went to curl up and take a nap in this:
And just before she dozed off, I whispered:
"See. I do too finish stuff."