Mystery Quilt Layout

When a quilter participates in a Mystery Quilt, its a mystery, right? It feels like living in favor of what might be rather than worrying about disasters that we are sure life has in store for us. My first MQ leader always would say, "Trust me" about it all, and I discovered that I was really low on trust. 

Yet, my first MQ turned out so remarkable. Participating in more MQ retreats with her, every single quilt astounded me, and built my confidence. Thing is, she was always there to explain instructions & guide my choices because she was invested in the outcome for me.

I've been working on two online MQs that I want for quilt backs and just got the first one laid out and started to pin rows for it this morning. There was no one who guided my fabric choices nor explained how to lay the blocks out. I was pretty much on my own with them. And it was up to me to trust myself. Once again, I realized how low I am on trust of any nature. I wanted to run from this challenge, yet, here it is all laid out and ready to pin.

Over the course of the years I have been quilting, one of the things that manifested for me was the enjoyment of what happens in the moment as I put my creativity on the line. I've given into the energy & time to create something new & exciting from the scraps & leftovers others give me.

Especially with fabrics that came from a friend who passed, I find myself asking her spirit what she was thinking of doing with the various pieces. Often they make no sense to me, yet as I use them, they blend in interesting ways.

Doing creative quilt backs has become fashionable. It used to be that folks would back them with plain muslin. Not knowing better, I have purchased up to 10 yards to make a one-fabric back. Any more, the quilts I am making have either the one-fabric choice or something more creative like this one will be.

The other project I worked on yesterday was for a new block swap. My partner for this one wants to make an orange and white quilt and settled on a Pinwheel pattern. I pulled out a white & two orange fabrics, making this one, which had little white.

Then I used the same three fabrics, just cutting them differently to have the larger triangle from white. What a surprise to see two different looking blocks appear. I've not done this before so had no idea this would happen. It was a change of vision and perspective. Same pattern, same fabrics, yet a different outcome.

I thought about how life is like that even in families where you have the same environment, same people around you, and yet siblings can turn out as extremely different adults with very different values, and appear quite unique just like those two orange and white blocks. And again, its that mystery component without a way to foresee the future exactly as it will manifest. It might come back to that trust factor, which is still low in me. Low, perhaps because I need more experience, need to think more clearly about the choices I might make.

I sit here in front of my computer screen shaking my head at it all, at all the words I called up this morning like mystery and trust, like difference and change. And so it is and so it goes.