Okay. I have no new ideas since yesterday, but that doesn’t mean I need to just sit here and dive deeper into a foul mood. It’s time to bust out a WIP to the rescue. I just remember how important it is, as a quilter, to not finish things. That way there is always something to pick back up when you are otherwise running on empty. Having everything finished is actually a curse; it is then that the darkness creeps in.
The WIP I grabbed this morning spells out the word LOVE in Braille four times. Actually, it spells “love” two times and “LOVE” two times; the Braille for uppercase and lowercase is different. It’s a simple bit of communication, but it let me play with color and relationship in some fun ways. It also gave me an excuse to do a whole lot of reverse appliqué circles, which I’ve been wanting to do for some time now. Don’t ask me why; it’s kinda a pain in the neck. I guess I just wanted to see how well I could do it.
I suppose that is sort of what I do with all of my quilts: set myself a challenge and then see how well I can follow through. It’s the only way I really know of to get better at it. Don’t just do the things you know how to do; stretch yourself to do the things you can’t (yet).
I’ll probably go back to my arsenal of letters and numbers for the next quilt, but for the moment I’m enjoying just messing with color and cutting out lots and lots of circles. Who knows what I’ll do with that skill down the road. So many possibilities…
Much love.
-t
PS: I love my tiny sewing scissors for cutting out appliqué; it reminds me of the scissors my grandmother used. It also feels so immediate, which is why I still don’t use a digital cutter. I love the process of cutting things out by hand, the labor of it. I spend so much time writing and designing on a computer that the times spend with material and scissors grounds me back here in the material world.
