1 year and 7.5 months after starting this double wedding ring quilt its hard to remember that it ever looked so humble and tiny.  Over 48,000 hand-quilted stitches later I'm feeling quite overwhelmed by all of the things this project taught me, and all of the things that I experienced through the nearly 20 months while making it. Looking at the back of the quilt especially startles me with the way 4 simple inexpensive materials can come together to make something so exciting. I repeated the most basic hand motion thousands of times to draft these materials into a single object, and the result of that motion is the very thing that becomes the most elaborate and marvelous part of this quilt. I thought it could be so as I was stitching, but there is something completely different when you tie off that last knot and open up the quilt to take a look. The back seemed unimportant to me as I worked, and the surprise of it turning out so lovely has flooded me with all kinds of reflections. The undersides of our lives shape us so much more than we think -- the quiet bits of our routine that are boring and we think forgettable add up to something too. You can shape even the simplest, most banal acts and add them up to shape your life and self from almost nothing. Every now and then those simple little acts might add up to one of those big life changing moments, just like adding up all those stitches you suddenly tie off the thread and find something remarkable all around you.