december 16.

Today’s prompt:

Take a quiet moment.  Breathe. It is in this moment that you will find what you are looking for.

If you came into my living room right now, you would see fabric scraps, errant threads all over the floor, and half-finished projects draped over the couch and propped up on the piano.

For the past couple of days, we have been in making mode.  It happens every December.  We are a bit of a gong show during this time.  I always begin with review lessons on treating the sewing machine as another member of the family and then they’re off – they run to the fabric closet, someone yells a warning about the hot iron on the ironing board in the upstairs hallway, and everyone finds a spot on the floor to lay out their work.

As we dig into the making, we always manage to lose a dozen pairs of scissors at in less than 10 minutes.  Someone always spills the box of a gazillion safety pins or the box of bobbins.  I have at least one meltdown over someone using my fabric scissors to cut things other than fabric.  You can find me alternating between seam ripping and re-pinnng at the dining table.  I don’t stop managing the chaos once we start.  My husband laughed at me today as I kept getting up to re-heat my morning coffee.

But in this chaos, I find peace.  I can’t help but to remain present as I focus on threading needles, teaching ladder stitches, and helping baste quilts.  I sat with one of my daughters and taught her how to bind the quilt she made.  We made the binding together and attached it to the quilt.  I sat with another and helped her stitch up a hole in a stuffed giraffe.  The fabric has ripped a bit during the stuffing and I am on repair duty.

These are my favourite moments – the times when I get to sit beside my child with a simple needle and thread.  I breathe and stitch.  I tell them that there is no problem that we can’t solve together.  We can take things apart and put them back together again.  We can mend mistakes.  The stuffed mermaid with the arms that are too small is perfectly unique and beautiful.  We can use what we have, scraps and bits and pieces, the fragments and the discarded rags, and make something whole and complete.

Today there were no quiet moments but plenty of moments to breathe deep the one moment right in front of me.