Grit: perseverance and resilience. Grit: Courage and resolve; strength of character.

However you define it, I think we’d all agree that a bit of grit is a good thing. A lot of grit, even better.

This topic has come up often in our home of late as we negotiate mathematics, French, musical instruments, etc with our kids. These things are hard and they can’t be learnt overnight. In the case of music, they can’t even expect to be competent after a year.

We talk a lot about unrealistic expectations, persistence, coping with frustration/feeling inadequate and just doing the work.

I thought, hey, why not make a reminder of this to hang on the wall, because that’s what us crazy craft ladies do.

After cutting my 1.5″ squares and sewing up my 1.5″ HSTs, I used a heavy weight fusible to give it some body and keep all those little intersections nicely lined up.

The squares and HSTs were 1 inch when sewn. The piece is 12″ x 21″.

Once it was basted I matchstick-quilted the letters vertically, then all the black squares horizontally. For the low volume fabrics I quilted out radially from the centre. Binding is a white Lizzy House bracelets fabric.

Grit now resides in the study with its hand made friends, ever ready to be pointed at when my kids (or I) need a reminder to keep at it.

In other news, I broke my fabric diet and bought some Carolyn Friedlander Doe because I am only human.

I am also super close to putting out a second pattern in my shop. I had some fun with purple on this sample, definitely not one of my go-to colours.

And finally, I will have another newsletter out soon – so if you’d like free instructions for this lap-sized quilt then you know what to do!

Until next time, happy sewing and grittiness!

P.S. For those interested, here’s a good little TED talk on grit and success and kids.