The Quilt Diaries - Times Like These

It’s been a while since I’ve made a quilt for The Quilt Diaries. It took a while for inspiration to strike with everything going on. But I’m glad when inspiration struck it was this quote – “In times like these, it’s helpful to recall there’s always been times like these,” from Paul Harvey.

Paul Harvey is one of my favorite Americans and this is one of my favorite quotes. Growing up in Kansas farm country, I have fond memories of listening to Harvey’s mid-day radio broadcast sharing “the rest of the story…” I remember listening as a kid in the car with my parents and then listening on my own as I got older. I’ve always appreciated Harvey’s down to earth wisdom. 

This particular quote brings comfort to me. It reminds me that our country has had its ups and downs and has always been a bit of a hot mess. The first time I realized that there was a lot more to our country’s history was when I was watching HBO’s John Adams mini-series. I hadn’t really thought much about history since my days of memorizing facts and information from high school and college classes. But I remember after watching this series thinking, “Wow! The beginning of our country was a messed up!” My eyes were opened to the complexities and challenges our early leaders faced as they started our nation. I also realized that somehow things went forward. Since then, I’ve since studied history more closely and have seen this time and time again – we face challenges, but we move forward. 

We’ve never had one perfect chapter in our history. There’s no magical person or entity that can makes things better for our county and for us all. There’s always been times like these. How have we gotten through them? We just have – sometimes more effectively and gracefully than other times. I think our county and people have fared better during difficult times when we’ve worked together. 

I don’t have any great wisdom or predictions for the future. Honestly, I’m just trying to get along day by day right now. Right now, our challenges are particularly great – battling racism, working for the health and safety of everyone, the economic fall-out many are suffering from right now, and even the upheaval of our daily lives. I don’t have any answers and I struggle trying to figure out what I can do to be part of a solution for all these things. 

But I do take comfort knowing I am like all other Americans, especially those that came before us. There have always been times like these. And we’ll move forward. Time does not stand still. We will get through this one way or another. 

Construction Notes

The Quilt Diaries project continues to be a creative practice for me where I regularly make a small quilt to try new techniques and ideas. I think this was one of the quickest mini quilts I’ve made. Once I knew what the quote was about and decided to place it front and center, all that was needed was a simple border, some simple outline quilting, and binding.

• The lettering on this quilt was made with glitter iron-on vinyl cut on my Cricut Maker. 

• I didn’t quilt the center quote panel as I didn’t want the quilt lines breaking up the text. 

• I just added sashing, and quilted that part a bit for dimension and to secure the quilt together.

Thank you for visiting The Quilt Diaries! Questions about this project? Feel free to contact me and I'll be happy to visit more.