All of us learned to count as youngsters. Most of us take for granted our counting skills. And yet, it reminds me of how we count or matter to each other. Love from someone else heals us as it acknowledges our existence, assuring us that our presence is valued by someone else. We count on each other. Distance doesn't matter. We can be together with just a memory, just a thought, just by sending positive energy and support.
I am still working on those two scrappy MQs that will serve as backs on a couple of quilts. Once the pattern was completed, it was left to me to come up with final placements. The suggestion was to follow pictures and lay it out in whatever way works for the ways the fabric was cut.
That layout being done, the small 4.5" blocks need to be pinned, pieced and pressed row by row. I had a bad experience a few years back trying to keep the blocks and rows together. That quilt was laid out on a diagonal and as I picked things up, I must have twisted blocks, and a few of them had to be ripped and pieced again.
I could see that rows needed to be counted & tried using post-it-notes, which came off in the shuffle of things. I knew these numbered pins existed but had no luck finding them. One day, a package came in the mail for my birthday from someone I dearly love. It was this round of Marilee's Numbered Q-Pins.
Now, I can pin up to 20 consecutive rows and start over if I need to use another round of numbers. I can even use the pins to help me count on a couple of projects going at the same time. This MQ back has 12 rows to it (unless I add more before doing the borders). Once the rows are done, the points to the blocks need to be matched so it will just take time and patience. It is at that stage, the counting pins will be returned to their round container.
Keeping track of the smaller pieces or rows on a quilt makes the bigger piece easier to work with and finish. I can see how all the people in my life who have mattered to me from the time I was born to now make up who I am. They count, I count, we count.
There are endless methods of quilting and a passion for everyone who picks up a needle. And while some folks will tell you to follow your passion, it seems to me that the best we can do is be authentic and recognize what is a good fit for the work we do. I think it shows.
I sat in an all-day workshop yesterday, & learned techniques for needle-turned applique. For as much as I enjoy embroidery, I thought this was going to be something I could get into and yet it was not. The project is simple enough and will be a lovely piece, but its just not my passion.
No one sitting at the table understood my reference to feeling as inept as Arya Stark doing her needlework on the HBO series Game of Thrones. In the early part of her story, she sits with her older Sister and some other girls their age under the watchful eyes of a tutor. The girls are learning to space their stitches evenly and delicately. Arya's hand is not steady but really, her attention is outside in nature, running and playing hard.
For most of the long day, I just did my best to keep up with the group and to give the project my best intentions. There were even a couple of Sisters teasing each other all day that further reminded me of Arya and her Sister, and increasingly reminded me that it was ok to be different.
By the time I got home, I was back-weary from sitting so long in a room without windows, and realized that as I work in my own home, I am up and down all day, stopping, starting, shifting projects. That sort of fluid routine suits my personality better than sitting still and staying singularly focused.
When I first signed up for the workshop, the finished block called out to me. The colors were bright and the 3-D look to it appealed to my sense of drama. There is more than half of the project to complete and it might take me a night of finishing it while watching a video. However, I think that its not where I want to put much of my energy.
Quilters like various parts of the art more than others. Some quilters pay to have others do steps they either cannot do or don't wish to do. Maybe most of us have come to that place in our lives where we realize life is just too short not to be involved in the passions that drive us forward.
I woke up this morning thinking about the times I worried about choosing the best action to take in certain situations. With all the options, sometimes it can be hard to make a choice and so we don't make a move. Its often said that if we listen to our inner voice, we always take the path that is perfect for us. However, it can be one of trial and error over many decades to get it right.
I got a blog email last night from the facilitator of the 12" Christmas Block Swap group. Her question to me asked what a block would look like with the white in the center of the Pinwheel. I had been thinking that too, so last night cut & pinned more pieces to lay them out differently.
This morning, I pieced and pressed to get this one. All three examples are going to my partner in today's mail.
Same pattern same fabrics, different layout. And who is to say one is better than the other? Oh, that's right, the quiltmaker. In a swap, the partners follow the guidelines to use the colors and work with the block pattern. THEN, when all the blocks have come in to the quiltmaker, she has to assemble them, add either more blocks or sashing, and borders...back them and quilt yet another pattern across the quilt to hold it together. Thereafter, she binds it and its done for the rest of us to ooo and ahhh when we see it.
How like life this process is. How like trust. How like human interaction. How like it all. These three blocks helped me see the value of choice is. Maybe Cathy's suggestion to me last night was like the voice of a higher power ('higher' because I respect the work she does for quilters, as well as knowing she sees the work of countless other quilters and may have a more seasoned vision to the whole process).
However one wants to interpret the guidance of others whether they are teachers, elders in a family or the neighbor down the street, it helped my own process that was already thinking that there might be more to see in this block with these fabrics.
Bottom line is about choice and experience, and practice, and trust. Yes trust.
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.
What a joy it is to find something unexpected in the mail. These are three potholders and a bunch of yellow ducks for the bathroom. Thanks Prickly Patti! I just hope the handmade gift I sent for the exchange gets to her. I put the wrong street on the package, and when the PO clerk told me it might be 16 rather than 19, I wrote that number below it in hopes that they would deliver it rather than return it....hoping
What comes from the heart, touches the heart. Like many others in our group, this month's 12" Christmas Block Swap partner has been particularly fun to chat with online. She is an advanced quilter, so I tried to up my game & give her a block that would seem worthy to her skills. Just from those chats, it was apparent that she would accept any block from me and wasn't looking for me to prove myself to her. It was all in my mind. It was me nursing these high expectations.
I found another Jinny Beyer Studios pattern & started cutting. http://www.jinnybeyer.com/quilting-with-jinny/free-patterns.cfm. No matter how I think I am working accurately, the Studio's instructions are really often for a quilter who is more skilled than I am. Yet, I keep trying. I love the creative options on this site. I even looked at You Tube to find a tutorial on setting those Y-triangles at the base of the red arrow-looking pieces. Everything is close, but not wholly spot on. I actually love the block and would be satisfied if it were mine.
It didn't take me long to see how I move in my relationships; that I want to do my very best, and that I am the one I need to please, not others. I know that might not seem so because the end result of my work often is a gift. However, my work is really about my own self-measurement and standard. I want to keep evolving in skills and spirit.
I gave that first block three tries with ripping seams and starting over. And then when it was all together and some of the points were not perfect, I decided to find a different pattern more at my skill level and make it. At this stage, I stopped looking at the points and just accepted it as done. I am packing both blocks for shipping this morning. My partner plans to use the swap blocks she gets as part of table runners for family gifts. I've seen some work of others in our group that are stunning. Sometimes a quilter will take three blocks, add sashing and borders, add a back & then quilt, and have a really outstanding small quilt to give.
I am not sure what it will take from within me to be satisfied with my own work. Its been a lifetime of this kind of behavior and so I can smile, knowing that this is who I am. Its can be like confusing the quilt block with the quilter. Neither will be perfect and maybe that is ok. Perfection might be a goal and a standard, but when it becomes an issue, then what it really brings to the forefront is a need for inner healing.
Looks like this day is all about piecing what I've cut and pinned the last few days before. Like many other steps in quilting, this one doesn't look like much in a photo. And like our lives in process, change is ever present and quite subtle. We need to do the mundane things that become ritualized or routinized in order for our bigger goals to manifest.
What I have been doing is moving my projects to sit around my work station and then just keep chain piecing. Its almost mindless, and creates thought of what it might be like to work in a factory or an office doing the same thing over and over.
What is the difference between ritual and routine? Perhaps its just the words we use. Ritual conjures the sacred and profound, where routine seems mundane and boring. To do a ritual is to be a Priestess at an altar, as a member of an elite group serving a divine force that is sparked from within. To perform routines is to be ordinary, human, and accountable to some outside force for a paycheck that is always less than substantial.
The other piecing projects laying at my workstation are the two comfort quilt tops for the guild. Right now, its just joining blocks in rows and as soon as that part is finished, rows get joined for the top.
Sure, I could work on any one of these projects to finish them, but its not my style to do only one thing at a time. I NEED the variety as a stimulation. Also, if I get stuck on a block like I am with this month's 12" Christmas swap, I can set it aside and keep working on something else.
Its a piece to the whole. Each project is a piece to the whole.
Sometimes, a wounded child falls down, scrapes her knee, and needs attention. It may not be a life-threatening event, but she is crying, and while it hurts a little, her whole world is disrupted because of an event that came fast and unexpectedly. I remember one time I fell as a child and hurt myself enough to go to the ER; I remember another time I fell water skiing and got so scared; and I remember one time I tripped in a parking lot a couple of years ago and was so embarrassed that I hurried into my car, and then felt the pain. The older I get, the harder it is to fall.
These are my experiences that were the challenging pieces of my whole being. No one picked me up, but I kept going on my own and I think that is what we all do for most of our lives. It simply makes sense to me to have all these on-going projects that seem mundane and tedious. They are not. They are part of the sacred work I do and I am a Priestess creating with love and honoring life through my fabric arts.
