A Small Quilt with a Big Life Lesson
Remember the days of balancing: raising young children, holding a full-time job, laundry, 
meals, and the myriad of other responsibilities we juggled and somehow it all worked out? Today I was gazing at the small wall hanging I made decades ago and remembering the important life lesson it taught me.
The early 1980s were a busy time in my life and I ached for just a little time to quilt. Impossible, I told myself and put the thought aside for another time, probably another year. Yet, shortly after, leafing through a quilt magazine, I found a wall hanging idea I loved and felt compelled to create it.
The theme was variations on the World War II Spools pattern. The pattern evolved during the early 1940s as women at home were left with abundant numbers of empty spools as they sewed prolific supplies for the soldiers so far from home. A seamstress from early adolescence on, and later, a quilter, I had always particularly loved the Spools Pattern as the perfect symbol of my love of textile-work.
Suddenly I had to find a way to make my wall hanging. How to do it, though?
Shortly after, the Universe somehow (via radio, television, newspaper, magazine, or a conversation) reminded me of a saying I’d long ago heard but never acted upon: You can read the Bible in one year if you read fifteen minutes a day.
Fifteen minutes a day. There was my answer. Not the Bible, (Forgive me, my Creator!); rather, I gathered my fabrics and quilting tools, carved out those daily few minutes, and within two months was able to hang what became my all-time favorite wall hanging.