So. I truly am working on my Mini Cake Stand quilt. Honestly. But there's a point (or several points actually) when things always seem to get extremely tedious. The back and shoulders start hurting. The eyes blur. I almost run over my finger with the needle. Again.
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| Mini Cake Stands in progress, really |
That's when I feel the need to either leave the quilt room entirely OR find something else to work on. It's the number one reason I have several quilts in various stages of completion all at the same time. Plus, I focus better when I don't just push through the boring stuff all in one big step. It's the simmer system. If I let things simmer until I feel good about the next step, I come up with better ideas. Feel more creative. And usually, more old fabric/scraps/leftovers are used up. It's a win win all the way around.
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I need to use my leftover viney stuff somewhere.
It's getting all sad and neglected feeling stuffed in the box. |
My Happy Geese quilt
(the project where I ripped ugly blocks apart and started over) has been busily simmering over in the corner of the quilt room. The moment came when I couldn't bear to sew on my Mini Cake Stands for another second and then my eyes happened to rest upon the geese panels. All of a sudden I had ideas. Ideas that no doubt I could go digging through my inspiration books and discover have been done a dozen times before today by other quilters. But that's okay 'cuz my leftover vines need rescuing and I'm not pretending to reinvent the wheel. Just enjoy my quilting.
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| Curvy wurvy stitching and me: Not getting along at all. |
I tried out that curvy stitching stuff. All these good ideas and I don't know anything about what I'm doing. After 2 hours of trying to get things to sorta lay flat and then intensely examining a good quilting book with
instructions and everything, I finally gave up. My seam ripper was about to melt and I was done. Absolutely fried with the entire effort.
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| Hand stitching it is! |
So, back to the basics of what I do best. That lovely hand stitching. I feel pathetic. Obviously I need a class. With lots of visuals.*wink
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| I think I've been here before..... |
Thankfully hand stitching is a fairly soothing endeavor. Isn't it incredibly relaxing to work with something that actually wants to cooperate?
I'm so glad you came up with a name for that process..."Simmer System". Sounds so much better than "procrastinating"! hee hee! Yep, I often work that way too.
ReplyDeleteI'm having such hard time concentrating on just one project at a time. I keep wanting to do anything BUT what I'm doing. But it must be done in time for the Oct. quilt show, so I force myself to plug along through the tedious parts. Slowly it is getting done. Ugh.
I have never in my life procrastinated a thing (cough, gag, chuckle!) I am a firm follower of this rule of thumb: WHY PUT OFF TILL TOMORROW WHAT CAN BE PUT OFF TILL NEXT WEEK!
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely...the hand stitching can fix anything :)
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