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Labor of Love

Sometimes a project you mean to knock out quickly has other ideas. Such was the case with a market bag I decided to make out of blue scraps from my bin way back on May 18th.

Once I pieced it I just knew it was going to take longer than a night, which had been the original plan. I began seeing lighthouse spotlights, and wanted to interpret that in embroidery. Since my arthritis has curtailed my hand stitching that created a time management problem for me. I'd have to work on it when my fingers allowed me to.

Very often such complicated artistic choices happen out of the blue (forgive the pun) for me. I don't know why. I become obsessed with something and I can't rush the process. I take it on despite my limitations. I cannot be persuaded to abandon such projects, even when I get sick and tired of them.

I worked on this for a short time almost every day since I took the fabric scraps out of my bin. It often frustrated me. It really challenged the absolute limits of my dexterity at present. I oftem thought about abandoning it because I couldn't seem to get it to equal the vision in my head. Finally it came together as I was embellishing it with buttons and a few more areas of embroidery, and I completed it on August 10th.

Usually I don't take 85 days to do anything but quilts, but there you go.

I think the reason I took so long on this market bag, which really is just a lot of scraps with a bunch of embellishment and stitching on them, is because soon I'll never be able to do this again. I defied that by making this bag. I've accepted that I will soon lose my ability to hand stitch projects, but I never have to like it. For that reason I'm very glad I stuck with this one. It is another important landmark in my creative journey.

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