February AHIQ Play

For some reason I experience a lot of resistance to starting my 'improv.' quilt projects. Yeah, yeah, I wing it all the time with applique, but that's different. Applique improv. is easy peasy.*wink  So even with lots of ideas percolating in my brain considering future improv. ideas {including three current stacks of wonderful-to-me fabric blends}, I pulled a brand new stack of fabric and did something completely different.

The first four

For the moment, I feel that boundaries are needful to me. A starting point and perhaps something I can 'see' will truly come together. A promise of success. So I returned again to Sujata Shah's 'Cultural Fusion' book. I love how she gives you the plan and then tells you to make it your way. My kind of thinking.

I've been wanting to make some chunky looking crossroad blocks for awhile now. Obviously. They've been simmering in the back of my brain {taunting me} and every now and then I see them flash across my vision like a mirage. Here and then, poof! they're gone. I see them a little bit wonky and LOVE that they aren't perfect--will never match up in a million years. But I never really did the work of figuring out how to make them. Or even look for patterns. There are so many quilty ideas floating around in my brain, who can keep track?

Looking at 12 blocks already!

Turns out I don't have to. In a maybe, what-if I look in the Cultural Fusion book? I found pure gold for this months AHIQ. On a different note, what really, really does need to happen is for me to learn how to follow a pattern correctly. I 'get it' and then as you see below, promptly forget it. Maybe I'm a visual learner? Huh. Probably 'hands on' judging by how often this happens.*sigh

Whoops!

Thankfully these are sewn together in sets of four. I might have given up if I'd already sewn all 100 squares that are cut out for the quilt! And I could feel myself relaxing by the third set of blocks. Whew!!! Wondering about cutting a curvier line, getting excited about the slight wonkiness I was achieving so easily. This is good stuff. No guilt here about starting yet another project. And I am using good fabric for this project. Really dug deep and used {mostly} fabric that I love. Fabric that I'm curious about--with colors that speak to me right now. I'm excited. Only 88 blocks left to go....

Linking up to Ann and Kaja  for the February AHIQ!