My Geese Tracks and Black Shadow Applique Quilt Top

First off, let me just say that the response to my last post has been nothing short of amazing! My daughters and I are having a very hard time not doing the girly, jump-up-and-down dance when we read all the wonderful comments! Quilters are the very best. So incredible! I will be sure and keep you posted as things unfold.

Geese Tracks and Black Shadow Applique

I finally got the applique work done on the border of Geese Tracks! So happy to see this one get to this stage of completed quilt top! It really has turned out to be a very fun quilt in spite of all the anxiety and doubts it has caused me throughout the making.

Here's the full quilt

We've been having gray days lately with a bit of rain--makes it hard to get a good, clear picture of my quilt. Hopefully you can see that this quilt has a lot of subtleties and areas that seem to 'pop' as well. This quilt started with me thinking I was making a top filled with geese track blocks and then somehow ended up over here.

And a little closer

That's alright. I kind of like a quilt that seems determined to have its own way! The problem of course, is knowing when to reign it in and when to fly with all the interesting ideas. I'm still learning to find that balance and ofttimes I get a headache trying to sort it all out. I can see the vestige of a really great quilt waaaay back in the corners of my mind, but I can't always bring it to fruition. Ah... creativity. It's such a hard thing to trust in for some of us!

Love the geese tracks...

The red geese tracks block on the right corner is made with scraps of my grandmothers fabric. Very special to me. I'm sure the fabric is at least forty years old (maybe even older) and just the fact that it was hers, makes me smile when I look at it. I'm a big fan of adding in bits and pieces to our quilts that have meaning and/or humor, whether in sentimental fabrics, ideas, words, quirky applique or style. Ha! I'm sure you had never noticed!

The red basket was a combination of my improv. efforts and also various readers suggesting that I add a basket under my black shadow flowers that seemed to have sprouted on my quilt. It's not always easy to show my work as it progresses because I feel quite possessive of my ideas, whether they are very clear to me or not! Although I had already considered putting a basket (or baskets) on my quilt, then I was sort of stuck wondering if I wanted to do that to please my readers or because that was truly what I wanted to do. When we start trying to please our readers, I think we fall into a nasty little trap. One that will very quickly stifle the best of our creativity. In the end I decided that the commentors and I were in agreement--a wonderful thing.

And of course the red basket!

As I continued working through the borders of my quilt, I kept what I was doing a little closer to my chest. I wanted to be sure that this quilt reflected the ideas that were gathering inside ME, so that I could feel confident in the end result. It's really tough sometimes to get a good grasp on those wispy little ideas, cut them out into fabric shapes (not to mention the right fabric print and color) and then see them come to life in our quilts. It's a beautiful thing and we should never cheat ourselves out of that very important boost of confidence we get actually seeing it happen. Yes! We can do this! We need it to make the next quilt. And the next. And then the next?*wink  Because sometimes we fail or fall short of what we imagine. And that's okay too. As long as we know that we tried. We'll get it next time.