It’s been around two months since I started working on my quilt. I haven’t posted any updates because I didn’t quite know what and how to tell its story. But today, I finally know how to begin. Today’s a perfect day for a beginning.

We start my quilt’s story with a question.

How many quilts have I completed in all my years of sewing?

And an answer.

One.

Quilts are tricky things, you see. I always start out thinking that I’m going to finish one in three weeks. Piecing squares of fabric together is therapeutic, mechanical and quick. All it is, quite often, is straight sewing, much like what I did the first time I learned how to use the sewing machine in home ec. Once the quilt’s started, I lose myself in the sewing machine’s steady hum, and something my grandma used to say when she herself used to sew: “One stitch in front of another, one stitch in front of another, one stitch…”

I think I’ll finish it, but I never do. My fingers find themselves tending to a new cake in the kitchen, or whipping cream for a strawberry mousse I’ve always wanted to learn, at the ends of a crocheted scarf or binding off a summer dress for my niece. These other projects are done in an hour, a day at most, so they’re quick fixes for my crafty twitchings. A quilt, on the other hand, demands time, patience and meticulousness. In the early years of my sewing I was much younger, and I had none of these.

And so it has been through many quilts: a silly dance around the possibility of completion. All in all, since I started to seriously sew about five years ago, I’ve started and stopped three wedding quilts for different friends, one of which was for Bona, who’s now not only married, but happily pregnant! Then there was my first attempt at making a Rail Fence quilt to keep my friend Gretchen warm when she moved to New York from Manila to study (she ended up graduating and I never got to finish it), another one to keep my friends Via and Noel cozy as they began the adventure of their lives in Torino, Italy. I even started working on a redwork quilt for Ross because red’s is her favorite color, though after all these years of never having finished the quilt, her favorite color is now, if I’ve heard right, brown (or orange? I can’t remember)! So many quilts…so many good intentions that ended up half-patched, half-made, half-lived.

But.

Somewhere in Manila is the only quilt I’ve ever completed.

It was made for a boyfriend from an old life, many seasons ago, a patchwork of colors he liked. I write about it because it was the first and last quilt I’ve ever made from start to finish. When you’re young, running on nothing but a dangerous mix of rock music and naive love, you can finish just about anything.

But I grew up, expanded my music library beyond the Foo Fighters, and allowed the years to roll on, some too quickly, others not quickly enough. When 2008 announced itself to me in the bright fireworks above Manila back in January, I decided that when I came back to Los Angeles, I would give myself the gift of a quilt in my favorite colors of green and pink. I would finally finish another quilt, just for me, and all on my own (my mom always helps me, and I’ve always wondered if I could make one by myself.)

I discovered that in the months leading up to when I actually started the project, I found my way back to the familiarity of sewing. I rediscovered my love for fabrics, reconnecting with a craft that’s been in my family for generations, making friends with the craftster in me who had fallen asleep between the piles of half-quilts in my closet through these years.

Choosing the colors for my quilt made me remember my favorites, but made me realize all the new ones I’d come to love.

Laying out the pieces and arranging them to make sense to my eye was almost like seeing myself on cloth (if that makes any sense at all)!

And sitting at my old post in front of the sewing machine, with Dave Matthews keeping me company, was like coming home.

I became whole, as the quilt did. A patch of old rose here, the delicate pattern of a gilded leaf there. Stitching those pieces together was like piecing myself together. (Yes, those are Band-Aids on my fingers. I’m a clumsy girl!)

And today, I look at how far I’ve come, step back and think, I believe I’m actually going to finish this. I know this with a certainty like no other. After this is done, I can truly say I’ve made not one, but two quilts in my life, and I’m on my way to making more.

I’ll be posting more updates, including a simple tutorial on how the quilt was constructed, in case you’re interested in making your own patchwork story. It isn’t as complicated as it may look!

However this post found you today: eating a bowl of strawberry porridge before you begin your morning, maybe as you’re rushing on your way to someplace, or as you’re taking a breather from a hectic day, I hope it reminded you that in the crafting of YOUR life, it’s never too late for beginnings.

You’ll celebrate with me when the final piece of thread’s been snipped off, won’t you? A brand-new quilt. I’m almost, ALMOST there! One stitch in front of another. I can’t wait.

Thank you to Ross, Via, Gretch and Ms. Nina for seeing me through this project in more ways than one. You are all pieces in my crazy patchwork life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.