Friday, July 5, 2013

Thoughts while driving


This is the test block for Birthday Bloom 12. It looks long and skinny because it IS! Plan on putting it in my next orphan block quilt.
As many of you may know I drive a lot. Always have and will until I suffer the loss of my driving privileges in twenty years or so.  I also quilt.  In the past year I joined a block of the month class at Quilter's Quarters in Stockton. The quilt we worked on was called "Birthday Blooms". It is a pretty quilt with, as the name implies, a flower for each of the 12 months of the year.  I had so much trouble with these patterns that my quilting confidence plummeted! Successive months became more and more difficult. I missed the last class but did get the block to put together. Early in the class I figured out that if I made a bloom out of my fabric before using the fabric included in the block for the quilt I could work out the kinks without destroying the actual quilt block. Let me tell you, it was really painful! And it got worse as the year of months went on.  I spent much of last week working on the test for the last block and bemoaning my inability to quilt with Debbie Chase, owner of Quilter's Quarters (who has always been most encouraging) and anyone else who would offer me cheese with my whine! While driving one day I listened to a Radio Lab segment on PBS . Don't know where I was going as all the miles kind of mush together in my brain. But the point is that the program was about hearing voices in ones head. I realized that I was listening to all my childhood voices which said I wasn't as smart as I should have been. I decided to reprogram my voices and so started thinking about all the wonderful quilts I have made and the people who love them and think I am a fantastic quilter. Then I thought about all the classes I have taken and the techniques I know. I sat down in front of my super little Feather Weight, picked up the directions and really looked at them. Low and behold! The directions for cutting were in color order, not top to bottom of the block order as I assumed. The last block is going together very well and I even have fabric left over! I love to quilt again and look forward to the new year of Block of the Month (which are paper pieced - my favorite technique!)
On another note, anyone know how to get rid  of the the 'send feedback' box on this screen? Perhaps I should send my feedback?!


This is about half done and is going together very well! Yea, me!

3 comments:

Jaye said...

http://artquiltmaker.com/blog/2013/07/various-sundry-2013-9/

Read the Danny Gregory post listed under Creativity & Inspiration.

You are pretty enough!

You are smart enough!

You can do it!

Xxoo

Jaye said...

http://artquiltmaker.com/blog/2013/07/various-sundry-2013-9/

Read the Danny Gregory post listed under Creativity & Inspiration.

You are pretty enough!

You are smart enough!

You can do it!

Xxoo

EngrSandi said...

We all have those negative messages we have swallowed from outside. Good for you for realizing what was happening and overriding them. We all need to learn how to do that.

This is a beautiful quilt block - both versions!