When life gets busy and stressful, quilting tends to fall by the wayside. But that’s when it’s needed most.

Officially, this block took me 18 days to sew, but in reality, most of the work was done at one three-hour meeting of my hand quilting group. This is one of the few times where I feel like I can quilt without guilt that I’m not doing something else more “important” than stitching. After all, the library meeting room is booked in my name, so I have to be there, right? And since I’m there, I should totally be working on a quilting project, right?

This block was listed as advanced difficulty, but I didn’t find it that difficult. It was actually pretty similar to my last block, which was listed as only intermediate difficulty. The main difference seems to be in the free-floating shapes on each block. On this block, we’re piecing squares instead of appliquéing diamonds. Piecing is always easier than appliquéing in my book.

First I assembled the side pieces, mostly while waiting for my turn for a haircut (another place where I’m a captive audience and can quilt guilt-free). I reveled in the lack of appliqué, simply stitching odd-shaped red pieces to the four sides of each cream square to produce each side piece.

Once those were completed, the rest of the block was exactly the same as the previous one, and since it’s boring to do the same block twice, I had to mix it up a bit. In the last block, the pointy bits radiating from the center were not as pointy, so I just attached all of them to the center diamond, rather than attaching them to one of the side pieces first. On this block, the pointy bits were pointier, so I needed a new approach.

I considered going back to my original method of attaching all the pointy bits to the side pieces like cat ears, but at the last minute, I decided to go wild and try something entirely new. I attached half the pointy bits to the center, and half to the sides, forming diagonal stripes (very wavy stripes) to sew together:

The finished product came out looking pretty good. Any perceived block wonkiness in the photo at the top of this article is due to my photography skills (or lack thereof), rather than the block itself being off kilter.

Eager to keep up the momentum on the project, I pressed and photographed the block right away … and then everything in my life seemed to need my attention all at once and I did nothing more with the block for three weeks. I just became more and more stressed out and had less and less energy for quilting.

Then yesterday afternoon, I found myself at home alone, with no access to a car to run any errands, not the right time of the week to make calls to try and fix any of the zillion things that have been clamoring for my attention, and I thought, “Why not take some time just for me?”

So, I went to my sewing table and got out the current block-in-progress. I’d sewn a few seams on it at the dentist’s office (a third place where I have nothing else to do and can quilt guilt-free), but hadn’t really gotten very far. That was all about to change, I decided as I settled down to stitch:

In the end, I got only 53 minutes of “me time”, but it was a transformative experience. It’s amazing how little quilting time it takes to restore equilibrium in even the most harried of quilters. In less than an hour, my family came home and demanded my time and energy, but I felt refreshed and ready to tackle it all.

I slept better that night than I had in weeks, cheerfully nagged my child to complete the online driving course required by our insurance (it’s finally done!), fixed my tablet that had been randomly rebooting for three months, and am still riding that momentum as I wrap up this blog post that has been hanging over my head for days.

This just goes to show the healing power of quilting. It’s so important to make time for it, regardless of how crazy one’s life is. And on that note, I’m off to stitch a couple more seams … for my health.