Saturday Night Special - What my down time looks like

This is how I spend a comfortable Saturday night. I can recall when I was 20 something being stricken with anxiety if I didn't have someplace to go and people to meet but now that I'm approaching that 50 mark-- I enjoy my alone time. A place I can curl up and relax after a hectic work week - the pleasure of solidarity.  My companions are a needle and thread and can only describe it as a telepathic ,intellectual conversation a quilter has with their work.  The quilt tells you what it needs and it will tell you when it is finished. I know to some that do not quilt, that may seem like a  pretty far fetched, artsy fartsy,over-the-top, divine metaphysical statement. Maybe it is, but what if it's not?  When you imagine, create and work with your hands and actually craft an object, it takes on its own polarity with the universe. Now I'm sure I have completely lost my readers, so let me explain. I have knitted and crocheted for years before I took up quilting a year ago.  It is the same metaphysical process when you create a pattern and you can, while working with the craft, become consumed by it, and actually slip into a meditative state. I spent a few years in college studying anatomy and physiology, psychology, sociology and even philosophy, although my better subjects had to do with the arts, I still can piece together what I learned studying human development. Everything seems to come together and I have a broader understanding, not to mention what used to be so concerning to me back then, hardly enters my thoughts now. Maybe everyone should study cellular functioning once in their lifetime. It seems as life goes by faster as you get older, more stress, little time and trying to save a dollar here and there to retire on, can all ball into one roller coaster I call -- life. So, to slow my roller coaster down, I find ways to destress and reconnect with myself.

Some of the ways I can really connect with myself is experiencing my art. Whether that is picking up my graphite/charcoal and sketching, my knitting needles and yarn, or my most passionate love - quilting. When I was a child my uncle and grandmother would inspire me to draw more, and I found with the gift, I could make the world I would want to live in -- and I did. With quilting, there is something more...something far more than just the fabric. More than just a pattern. It has it's own language that embodies comfort, love, passion, compassion, patience, and challenges. It can be a work of art that you can hang on a wall, or give comfort to someone.  When you wrap yourself with a quilt, it is unlike any feeling I can explain and till today, I still sleep with my very first quilt I made. I think I am up to my 12th quilt and it has been just over 1 year since I started. They dress my couch, and are sprawled over my bed, and have been gifts to at least 4 people now. The reaction you get from giving a quilt is priceless. I think a quilt becomes so powerful because of the time the person puts into making it, their love comes through it, their creative art, and passion is passed through the quilt and the receiver, at least I believe, feels that energy.  A quilt will, most of the time, outlast the quilter; therefore, it is a piece of that person that lives on forever, for as long as that quilt exists.

Here is an article I found from the Oxford Journal of Public Health, "The relationship between quilting and well being" http://jpubhealth.oxfordjournals.org/content/34/1/54.short

Emily L. Burt, Postgraduate Student and Jacqueline Atkinson, Professor of Mental Health Policy 
and I quote, "...findings illustrate how creative craft hobbies such as quilting can be a meaningful vehicle for enhancing wellbeing".