I Forgot What Play Feels Like

This quilt helped me remember

Welcome to Making Time. What makes a life feel vivid rather than rushed? These are my reflections from rural Oregon on attention, ritual, and making things by hand. If you’d like to follow along, you can subscribe for free.

In winter, it’s so cold when I enter the shed that I have to keep my coat on for the first hour. Sometimes, I wear fingerless gloves to keep my hands warm as I cut the little shapes from scraps of fabric.

It’s different in summer. On those days, I go out there early, before the sun is too high, and keep all the windows open. I hope for a breeze to come through the lace curtains, even if it scatters the smaller bits of fabric around.

Each month of the year, I created a new block for my quilt from whatever scraps I had lying around. At the end of the year, I pieced them all together and created a patchwork of a year of my life.

Every month, I’d line up the blocks I’d made so far and go through scraps to pick new fabrics.

For each block, I only used what I already had. These were the leftovers from other projects that I collect in milk crates, or small lengths of fabric that I picked up years ago and never used. They’d otherwise be discarded, so I use them freely.

It’s not precious. If it looks beautiful in the end, that’s nice, but while I’m making each block I’m just trying things out, seeing how different colors look together, coming up for a use for what’s in front of me right then. I am playing.

Play is scarce. So much of our lives are driven by pressure. We have to make a living, manage the chores, take care of families, take care of ourselves. The obligations accumulate on our minds like a film of dust.

Everything starts to feel like work, because everything has a goal. I walk the dogs on a crisp and sunny winter afternoon, but I’m checking my watch and thinking of the unfinished email I need to get back to. I make lunch, but I’m trying to squeeze in some reading while I eat and don’t really taste the lemony dressing I made for my salad.

I want things to be a certain way, to get it all done finally once and for all. All day long, I think must, should, need. This is the nature of work.

The finished quilt, made entirely from scraps

The quilt back was also made from scraps, using a strip quilting technique. I like it almost as much as the front.

But then I go back to the shed to play with my quilt. Laying out little shapes of color like a small child, I listen to my own intuition. The questions are simple. Do I like this? What about this? What if I tried this one instead? It’s like a game. It matters, but it’s not serious.

In only a few minutes, I’ve wiped away that dusty layer of obligation. Yes, the dust will accumulate again, because there are always more to replace them. But I can clean them off, again and again.

Rusty approved!

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