You Never Know

Quilting can be a form of dreaming. I find myself saying things to myself like...if I only knew what this would look like...follow your dream...take that one step at a time... don't settle for less....

Dreams actually give direction to my life. Some mornings, just before I am really ready to get out of bed, I find myself thinking about the day to come. Is it visioning? Is it still dreaming? Either way, what I think about becomes my guide to taking those next steps.

Quilting, like life, is a series of steps. Success comes inch by inch and stitch by stitch. Failure? Well, in quilting there is a ripper. In life, maybe all you can do is make an apology.

The next step for the Mystery Quilt came out yesterday, but was fraught with errors the author didn't catch before publishing it. She scrambled to make corrections, some easy and some really hard to make work. Any time a person puts themselves out in public and screws up, they are subjected to a LOT of criticism. 

This photo represents the first cuts I made from the corrected pattern. There are more steps yet for me to cut squares out of the wider strips before I can set it aside and wait.

I don't wait easily. It could be another time for dreaming, this waiting stage. However, I scramble to fill up the time with something else, some other part of my dreams or visions. 

With these Mystery Quilts, you never know how they will turn out no matter how carefully you select the participating fabrics. If there is too much time for me in between steps, its too much time to think and I start second-guessing my choices.  What I did to help me in this process was to set aside two groupings of fabrics to do two MQ's for quilt backs. I have another one to cut after I finish this first one. 

You never know. I never know. And that's what makes my world go 'round.