Long Rambling Thoughts About Making

Make Beautiful Things is a very bright, bold looking quilt for me. It was started initially in response to an AHIQ 'words' challenge. Sort of a 'What would our quilt say if it could say anything at all' prompt. The solid yellow and dark brown fabrics were chosen quite by default, if only because they had sufficient yardage available without going out and buying new.

Make Beautiful Things is finished!

Most usually, I am adding words after a quilt is started. There I go, plodding along with my latest masterpiece and the quilt suddenly insists that it needs certain words added. That is something that happens fairly regularly around here as I find joy in the quirkiness of including words or a phrase in fabric. This time, the words would essentially BE the quilt and so it made it all the more important to find the very best wording.

The Rising Sun blocks make me happy

As the years have flown by, most of my local quilting friends have all moved on from quilting. They have aged, {died in one case} or perhaps never became interesting in challenging themselves to grow in the same way that feels important to me. Though I am very blessed to have a wonderfully supportive family rallying behind my interests, it's not like they are invested in the details of what it takes to arrive at the finish line. They are much more interested in the finished product and where, or to whom, it might be going. lol

Very simple but effective

It might seem to some like the projects careen from one idea to the next without a lot of thought, but the truth is something altogether different. There is almost always a story or theme behind every quilt. A color palette that I am ardently pursuing, a pattern, design, block {or style?} that is currently intriguing, an antique quilt that is needing interpretation, a particular challenge that I'm earnestly trying to meet, or perhaps even a stack of orphan blocks that are feeling miffed about being left behind. Whatever the case, you can be sure that I am doing my very best to make the finished quilt absolutely as beautiful as is possible.

Hand quilting makes everything even better

The quilting process is incredibly personal as it pertains to the 'journey'. Decision after decision is made that stems directly from personal experiences, current skill level, preferences, and/or the lack {or plenty} of supplies on hand. This quilt for instance, includes some largish Rising Sun or Twirly Wheel blocks that were languishing in the orphan totes. Would any of you have similarly unused colored/patterned blocks tucked away in your quilting room? Maybe the blocks or the colors, but probably not both.

Hmm.. love it with sunflowers too

The quote, 'I just want to make beautiful things even if nobody cares' {attributed to Saul Bass}, really jumped out at me as the starting point for this specific quilt. It says so much! Yes, I have good, quilty friends here on the blog who 'care'. My family 'cares'. Sometimes even the people who receive a quilt from me 'care', even if only in the abstract.

My motto

For me, the quote zeros in on something integral to making authentic and/or original looking quilts. It's become a motto sorts. Basically, I don't care if you or anyone else likes my quilts. Not to be rude, but it's really that simplistic. Oh, I get a great big smile on my face when people appreciate whatever it is that I'm doing! It feels really good and I'd be a liar to say that it doesn't matter at all.

When we make for ourselves and the furtherance of whatever journey that WE are on, then the decision making process can become greatly simplified. It only has to make sense in our heads to be 'right' which saves a lot of time lost spent testing the winds.

Do I wonder sometimes if what I'm posting on the blog here will be well received? Of course that happens! I just don't let it bog me down either way. It feels much, much better when we quit over-complicating progress with ideas and worries such as, 'Nobody likes yellow quilts!' or 'Oh yeah, these blocks are so obviously imperfect that I should be terribly embarrassed to think of using them!' or worse yet, 'This is a really dumb idea!'. Uh huh. Because every idea can be a dumb idea. Or NOT. How do we know until we try?

Don't misunderstand. You will still THINK these things and you might even be right about some of them. Many people do not and will never like predominantly yellow quilts. That's a fact. What is important is that you don't let these 'facts' diminish your desire to play with the color 'yellow' or whatever weird color that is currently tickling your fancy. Over and over again if that's what makes you happy! I can tell you that if you love a color and it shows to the point that somehow you make an amazing looking quilt with it? {'Cuz you will if you love it that much.} It won't matter if that's my least favorite color in the whole world! Suddenly, I'm gonna start thinking of ways to incorporate that very same element into my own quilting!

Gonna have to keep this one!

If I would have started out by capitulating to all these silly {mostly imaginary} external pressures, this quilt would never have been. It would have died in its infancy and those fun Rising Sun blocks would still be buried in the orphan totes or maybe even in the garbage! Where's the fun in that? I just want to make beautiful {to me} quilts even if nobody else will ever be moved by them, understand them, appreciate them or possibly even be inspired by them. By starting from a place of  'even if nobody cares', then we free ourselves exponentially to the making of more and more beautiful things. It's like a perpetual motion motion. We make. We like. We respond positively and enthusiastically. We make more. Others like it too? That's just bonus and oh yeah. Inspiration flowing to them. See how that works?

Funnily enough, this is a quilt that I stare at sort of in amazement. I did this? Made this? SO not me and yet, very, very me all at the same time. I'm constantly learning and growing and pushing myself and slowly, slowly the quilts show signs of that forward progress. When this quilt was laid across the foot of my bed, there was this huge feeling of achievement. Wowsers! What a bright, happy quilt! The challenge was the perfect impetuous to try something a little different and overall I'm beyond delighted with where it ended up.

Easier to stitch the letters to a background fabric first

Next up was the Coins and Baskets quilt. Yes, it's finished too. It was another challenge from our AHIQ friends that involved 'coins'. This one seemed super easy at first and the ideas flowed very quickly. For some reason I immediately fell in love with the idea of using up older fabrics from the stash. Where have you heard that one before?

A mix of hand quilting and stitched-in-the-ditch

Eventually, it became obvious that the original spark for the quilt was proving to be a spectacular fail. Of course, that doesn't slow me down for long as frustration is an unacceptable resting place. The ideas were parceled out into two separate projects for two completely different looking quilts. Other ideas got dumped, as well they should be.

Last minute words that seemed like a good idea

Can I just say that improv. coins are sheer fun to cut out and sew together? There will definitely be more of these in the foreseeable future! I thoroughly enjoyed the idea of grouping together several narrow rows and then creating an every-other block out of the result. Of course, something needed to be done about the rest of the quilt, but as you can see, my beloved element {baskets} to the rescue!

Really glad it has the brighter greens included

It was a fairly interesting quilt to make once the proper direction were sorted out. You can read more about that here. Lots of quick, simple decisions with the minimum of stress. Will that fabric work? yes. How about green for most of the baskets? Yes. Things like that.

Count Your Blessings is the obvious new name

Though I wanted this quilt to look good, it always felt like it had unspoken limitations. Sometimes its not a bad thing to know absolutely that the current project is never going to win the beauty pageant. We do our best to make it into the running and then just finish it out. By starting with the old gold, rusty reds, browns and black, {not to mention the improv. coins}, my default position went immediately to the 'primitive' vibe and never veered off of that particular path.

Always good to get in another finish....

I talked at the start of this post about making 'beautiful things'. You can believe that this quilt got plenty of attention too though I never believed it could end up looking 'amazing'. Close-up, there are some lovely fabrics used and I for one, happen to think that the baskets are very sweet. I even allowed myself to be persuaded into adding words onto the quilt--at a point where it probably seems ridiculous!

This quilt washed up very nice and wrinkly, giving it the proper cozy feel that every good snuggle quilt needs. It's being gifted to a friend as a comfort sort of quilt. Hopefully no-one would ever assume it was meant to be an heirloom {hands-off the precious textile!}, but rather, sit and drink coffee or tea while having it draped comfortably across their lap. No doubt you've gleaned that this quilt isn't nearly as exciting to me as the previous quilt, but I'm not a bit reluctant to claim it as one of my 'makes'. I gave it lots of love and now it's going out to spread some love. What can be better than that?