The days are long but the years are short when it comes to children. Last night I sat on the sofa shoulder to shoulder with my youngest child, not so much a child but really a man-child. Sixteen years old and taller than his mother and smarter too. I still have a few tricks he does not know so we sit together on the sofa and he lets me teach him to crochet. Like his mother he likes to keep his hands busy.

Now to say that he lets me teach him is to say that I know only one small thing more about crochet than he does since the reason I took up crochet and making what is turning into the worlds largest Granny Square blanket is that “at least it is not quilting”. I know only how to do this one thing when it comes to crochet –  make a granny square and honestly that is enough.

You see there is a danger when you take your hobby and move it into your career.. it is no longer your hobby it is what you do for a living. So no matter how much you love it (and I do) quilting it is what puts pancakes on the breakfast table and that seriously changes your relationship with how you do it and how you can feel about it at times.

Back at the very start of this adventure I had no idea that  BadAss Quilters Society would ever “be something”…. it was a flight of fancy based on an industry rejection of who I was and that did not sit right and thus BAQS was born. Such rejections are rarely positive and they can cut to the core. Being essentially told that you are not a “good enough” or “right enough” person for something based on someone else’s set of self imposed morals as opposed to being judged on your skill.. well there is little to say but it sucks.

The creation of BAQS was if anything to assure myself that skin color, sexual spectrum, age, or profession were  not barriers to being amazing or being a creative soul having a human experience. I would always support that journey and do my best to throw a spotlight on those who were getting the side-eye in the quilting world or who were just feeling left out for one of many reasons.

So here we are 5ish years later with companies that once shunned us now courting BAQS and its 21,043 members and it is all different in some ways and not in others, BAQS is still about the tribe. Of course there are now  taxes, accountants, growth projections and all the pretty stressors that come with a growing national brand. It is work, but it is GOOD WORK. We are growing and expanding and that is a very good thing.. since while we all love quilting we are so very much more!

It is me with the youngest of my 6 children at home as the last of those 18 summers slip by. This hit me hard today as I come up on the anniversaries of the birth and death of our beloved Gabriel Liam. It has been 17 years since we met him and lost him and it seems like forever and the blink of an eye all in the same breath. Life moves fast, hold onto the seconds.

With each child if we are lucky we get 18 summers in which to make memories that will last a lifetime. To slow down, eat dinner on the porch, go for a swim or watch for the first firefly of the night. These days are fleeting and it takes making a commitment to step back and make time not to lose these last fleeting days to the rapid-fire, page turning of the calendar.  I have not always been good at this and once stepped away from it so  wrongly that I spend my days making up for this.  But if anything life gives us new chances if we are willing to take them.

For this reason I am doing my best to construct my business in a way that let’s me live a life that when I look back I will not regret. I say what I need to say, support those who need supporting and live my life on the side of love.  This means I am doing my best to step away from my office at the end of each business day and to guard my weekends like precious jewels and to connect on a deeper level when at all possible.

It means I created a more intimate BadAss experience called the Speakeasy where I could hang with some of you and share bigger parts of my life in a more cozy atmosphere than that of over twenty thousand. Membership to the Speakeasy closes at the end of this month for the year. If you feel the call to join me there please do.

And as we are talking BAQS housekeeping, keep your eyes open for some other exciting changes as we welcome a cadre of BadAss Ambassadors in July. They bring with them a wealth of experience in all the creative parts of life and I think you are going to love them!!

Thank you for letting me be a part of your life. A safe place to be real for all of us.

One last thing….. I started quilting a quilt last week and in 1 pass in I knew it was a mistake, my heart was not fully in it… I am letting it go, ripping back the stitches and handing it over for someone else to finish.. and picking up a project that is more of my heart.  May all of our missteps in life be so easy to make right and may each of you find comfort in the summer days and finding the path which is truly your own.