Happy Old Year Ending: 2023

December 31, 2023August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

We can’t change the past.

Matthew Potts’ book Forgiveness: An Alternative Account holds this thought up to the light so the rays shine through in a multiple different ways, but the premise is always the same: “Even if we could completely undo the effect of what has been done, we cannot make it so that “the thing that was done never happened” (Jankélévitch, quoted in Potts, 77). That fact of the deed, and the impact of that fact if not of its effects, shall remain absolute and eternal.”

We can waste years of our lives angry at others out for all the wrong they have shown us. We can castigate ourselves for our personal failings (we all have our own list of them), vowing never to repeat them. We often struggle.

Potts’ answer? Bring in the principle of forgiveness: “Forgiveness seeks to live in the wake of loss. It accepts that what has been lost cannot be restored, and then it aims to live in and with the irrevocability of wrong” (23). He goes on to say that: “forgiveness also accepts that past as unalterable and so imagines what possibilities for the future its battered history might bear” (24). In other words, forgiveness is future-facing. “Whatever the past has been or the future may bring, we can begin, and begin again” (94).

I cannot quote enough of his book here to show you his extensive thinking around this idea. But I sometimes wonder — if we can not turn back time — why do we all turn our head to look behind us? Like how I started this post? These three quotes address this:

“As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you’re going to say, ‘Where did we come from, what happens next?’ The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future” (Margaret Atwood).

“One faces the future with one’s past” (Pearl S. Buck).

And finally, to bring it full circle: “Nothing we can do can change the past, but everything we do changes the future” (Ashleigh Brilliant). I liked Buck’s idea, that the lenses with which we view the future are colored by our past. Atwood is more tactical, encouraging to use what we’ve learned to plan our future. Brilliant, whose cartoon is above, cautions us not to waste our energy dwelling on mistakes.

I hope that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t tackle some of our UFOs, as I noticed that most of the quilt finishes (above) were pulled from my stack of UFOs. However, to think kindly about them, it’s like my past self left them for my current self to finish up (thank you, Pearl Buck). So, instead of rueing that new ideas in 2023 were sparse, I’m grateful that I had something to turn to to keep myself busy. I’m also trying to apply the ideas in Mr. Potts’ book to keep myself forward-facing. I’ve written up list of quilts I want to make in 2024, and I have already started on the first, sewing my way into this new year.

While I have a whole new year coming up in which to finish Potts’ book (and make quilts), what I’ve learned so far is this:
Evaluate where you are. Move on from failures.
Forgive, and then forgive some more.

Happy Old Year Ending–

Eclipse • Quilt #285 • my final finish in 2023

P.S.In a combination of satisfying, yet somewhat unhappy goodbye to 2023, our local quilt shop (Bluebird Quilts) decided to close, and I picked up several lengths of fabric for backings for these planned 2024 quilts. It was sad to say good-bye to the place where I started teaching; her reasons for closing are varied, and I wish her well.

P.P.S. If you are new here, you can always revisit some of my Happy Old Year Ending posts, where I re-introduce myself to my readers. And maybe give an observation or two. The one from 2019 is a classic.

*by Sharon Nullmeyer (@Nullsie on Instagram)*

300 Quilts · Quilt Finish

Time Let Me Play • Quilt Finish 2023

September 4, 2023August 31, 2025 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

Last night we had smoke from fires somewhere, but I never could figure out where. And so I gave up, because that’s what you do at the end of summer: you play it easy, play it nice. You take a breath. You don’t work too hard to find out things that don’t really matter. For nearly a week the temperatures here have felt like end-of-summer, with highs in the 70s and at night, lows that allow the window open.

This quilt is Time Let Me Play, the line taken from “Fern Hill,” a poem by the esteemed Dylan Thomas, where he describes his childhood from the vantage point of a grown man. He looks back, riffing, remembering and describing how he was king of the hill, lost in the verdant landscapes of his childhood Wales. I especially liked the repeating of the center lines of several stanzas:

Time let me hail and climb / Golden in the heydays of his eyes, /
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
Time let me play and be / Golden in the mercy of his means, /
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman
And playing, lovely and watery / And fire green as grass. / And nightly under the simple stars / As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away

Who is this personage that he refers to? It is Time, which gives him a chance to be “green” and “golden” — a reference perhaps to being young like a growing sprout, but also as a golden, or fair-haired and favorite child. The child is the “prince of the apple towns” and lord of the trees and leaves. He repeats “Time let me play” only once, but does refer to that necessary activity of youth, over and over.

Only at the end does Thomas allude to the ephemerality of what he has just described, when he says that Time held him both “green” and “dying,” giving hint to the arc of a day, of a season, the arc of a life.

And while I could go on forever, pulling out the ideas from this rich poem, I want to say tonight that I slipped out the door just at sunset, the sun climbing down from its throne in the sky, soon to slip down over the horizon. I had the quilt in my hands, and quickly clamped it up to the sprawling woody vines of our wisteria. I stepped back and took pictures as the golden light lit up the quilt.

The shadow of the leaves were soft smudgey shapes, a contrast to the crisp angles and simple lines of the quilt. The sun moved quickly and so did I, turning the quilt over to snap an image of the label, sewn on this afternoon.

I felt caught on the edge between day and night. And I am also caught on the edge of another shift of time: I am no longer that young child, climbing trees, playing as if it were the only thing to do in summer, drinking in the richness of clouds and dew and green and gold. But with cloth in my hands, I can still play once in a while, as that pure essence of a quilt — of color and line and shape and imagination — will still let me wander.

Time, let me play.
Again and again and again.

Quilt Details

Quilt #279 in my Quilt Index • 53″ square
Painters Palette Solids are from Paintbrush Studios
Magnifico thread is what I used for quilting, and that is made by Superior Threads
Designed, pieced and quilted by Elizabeth Eastmond (me!)
Pattern can be purchased in my Pattern Shop

Fern Hill

by Dylan Thomas, 1914 – 1953

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
     The night above the dingle starry,
          Time let me hail and climb
     Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
          Trail with daisies and barley
     Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
     In the sun that is young once only,
          Time let me play and be
     Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
          And the sabbath rang slowly
     In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
     And playing, lovely and watery
          And fire green as grass.
     And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
     Flying with the ricks, and the horses
          Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
     Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
          The sky gathered again
     And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
     Out of the whinnying green stable
          On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
     In the sun born over and over,
          I ran my heedless ways,
     My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
     Before the children green and golden
          Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
     In the moon that is always rising,
          Nor that riding to sleep
     I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
          Time held me green and dying
     Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Last words about the poem: I searched to understand what a nightjar was (found it), but that flying rick? Well, a rick was a name for a tall haystack, and I suppose the child falling asleep at Fern Hill might dream of flying nightjars and haystacks, just as the “owls” might “bear the farm away.”

300 Quilts · Quilt Finish

Amarysso • Quilt Finish

August 6, 2023August 31, 2025 Elizabeth E.14 Comments

I never hold my own quilts, preferring to be the one behind the camera, taking the shots. But we had a photo shoot for Amarysso, my latest finish, and we traded places. Here’s some more photos, next to two wonderful murals in our mid-town area. Okay, now Dave will hold it:

The back is a random print from the stash, with a rod pocket of Tula.

What does amarysso mean? It means “to sparkle.” It’s one of the root words for Amaryllis, the name of the fabric used for our quilt guild challenge, designed by Philip Jacobs.

Now me:

And we’ll give Dave the last shot:

My husband is a mural-and-art spotter for our town. He has a blog with lots of posts of murals and sculptures and interesting art, and was written up in our city’s newspaper. He started this project after he retired, and it just sort of morphed into his site Murals and Art. The thing that is keen about this is that whenever I need a backdrop for a quilt photo, I just go to his blog, point, and say, “Take me There.”

Thirty-four years ago, I pointed to the future and said “Take me There.” And he did, me and my four children, now *our* four children. This past weekend, we went to the wedding of our granddaughter, child of the little girl you see in the photo. In June, we went to the marriage of our grandson, child of the boy with the black tie on the left. We have a granddaughter on a mission for our church in Argentina, and yesterday, she just turned 20. And I wish I knew where that pink ribbon sash was that’s hooked around my waist (when I had one). I sewed it out of imported French ribbons, to accent my dress, also handmade. And where did the time go?

I’ll celebrate that evening by meeting with the Creatives, my name for our little group that gets together monthly for crafting, sewing, talking, sharing, whatever. It had gone defunct right before covid of its own volition, but we think we want to get together again. It will probably be a different, smaller bunch than who was here last go-round, but under the alchemy of Time, things do change.

We live in the now, framed by the past, and guided by the future.
Just like my Dave and I.

The most recent newlyweds at their bridal photo shoot

Other Posts about this Quilt, made from my Crossroads Pattern:

Crossroads
Crossroads and Simply Moderne Magazine
Uppercase Fabrics, Kevin Umaña, and Creativity Breakout

300 Quilts · Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt · Quilt Finish

Double Star • new pattern

July 3, 2023August 31, 2025 Elizabeth E.17 Comments

Kolob Canyon.

We were about mid-point in our drive from the Salt Lake City area to our home in Southern California, when we turned into the Kolob Canyon parking lot, in the upper section of Zion National Park. Ever since I sewed the binding on my newest quilt, Double Star, on the drive up to see a grandson get married, we’d been trying to find a place for a photograph. Kolob Canyon, with its red rock and green foliage, called to us.

We have a hymn in our church, If You Could Hie To Kolob, which is a fancy way to say “If you could get to Heaven.” The rest of the first verse sort of opens up the possibility of seeing where It All Began, and indeed, as we began the drive up the road to the Taylor’s Creek trailhead it does feel like you are in different space. There weren’t too many people, perhaps because of the threatening storm, or the advent of the Fourth of July weekend. But whatever the reason, it was bliss. We began to sing the hymn, then wondered how many other visitors were singing that same hymn, too, on their way up the canyon? And how many more of them were looking for a quilt photo?

A willing, helping visitor provided answers to both those questions: we were the only ones looking for a quilt photograph, but yes, he (on the right) and his wife did sing the first verse to that hymn as they drove up the canyon. The music is based on an old English tune, Kingfold, which figures because many of the early pioneers in this state hailed from England (including mine and my husband’s ancestors).

We struggled in the canyon’s wind, chatted with them, and wanted to go farther into the canyon, but the upper road had been closed because of winter damage.

The label notes the quilter, Jen Boyer, and that it is from my newest pattern, Double Star. This was a quick one for me, given my languid pace of the last six months, but to be fair, that doesn’t include the two years the bag sat sitting under my ironing board full of black and cream fabrics, collected bit by bit.

I love the curvy quilting pattern, but hate the name of the e2e pattern (Target Practice).

It was quiet up in the canyon with the road closed, with only a handful of visitors to these beautiful finger canyons. I hummed the tune, and was reminded that the last verses talk about how “Improvement and progression / Have one eternal round.” That is a good thing, given that I am always striving to be better, not only in quilting, but also in kindness, grace, and all those other perfectly wonderful attributes that the author Phelps wrote about in the 1850s. Revisiting some of those ideals helps ground me, and encourages me to live well in today’s world, where Phelps might have scratched his head about all the challenges that we face.

Back home, trying to finish up the writing of a pattern, I realized that while we’d had a grand time out in nature, none of those photos would work for the pattern front. So we headed to the California Air Resources Building, which was close by and that we knew had a dramatic entry, shielded from the windy day.

I promise my Quilt-Holding Husband is behind there, but it does look like the quilt is floating.

So now it is finished. You probably recognize that smaller bonus quilt from another post of mine. I included two versions of the smaller quilt in the pattern — one with the border, and one without the black/white triangle border (but it’s not hard to make). The whole pattern is pretty straightforward in the making so it earned at Beginner Plus label.

You can get the pattern in my PayHip shop, and if you act before July 17th, you can get 20% off with the code in the speech bubble, spoken by some rando with a black-and-cream quilt in red rock country. Glorious red rock country.

UPDATE: On JULY 20, 2023, the coupon will expire. I added a couple of extra days.

I guess I was just kind of taken with the place, and always have been since I married my husband when I was 34, bringing four kids to the marriage, and like the saint that he is, he brought us all on a trip when we’d been married about a couple of months, and that’s where I first saw Zion National Park, and Kolob’s finger canyons.

Maybe I was taken with the place because on this beautiful day in windy Kolob canyon, we’d just been to my grandson’s wedding the day before; he holding his bride’s hand, both their faces glowing as they said their vows. These two have an easiness about them, and it was lovely to be the grandmother and not have to worry about the arrangements, or the dress, or the tuxes, or the refreshments, but to just be able to sit and enjoy the radiant happiness of this young couple.

I take much hope in the hymn’s words written well over 150 years ago, their ideals firmly rooted in another time; however, they are still good for us.