Here I am again, with a bunch of pink and orange and some orangey-red patches. I’d started this when the boredom and pressure of constant grading began to get to me earlier in the fall, when cutting and stitching and feeling the fabric under my fingers was a tonic for what ailed me. I finally got back to it this week–Dead Week (bliss!)–and have finished most of the top. I still have another narrow white (with teeny blocks) then that long blocky-piano key-type border on the left. Just a little something extra to differentiate it from the one I made for my daughter (•here•).
I began this because I “knew” it–knew how to do it and didn’t have to think about it when my brain was really somewhere else. But it’s been interesting to stitch the same thing again. This repeating of a quilt is not a process I do ever, and yet I’ve always heard that “working in a series” is the best way to go. Of course those who offer that advice mean it in service of the creative process–not making the same exact thing over and over, but sticking with a technique, a style, mining a vein of creativity to see where it takes you. Knowing myself, I wonder if that might not lead to boredom on my part? It’s the constant change of promise that keeps me going forward. I’m guessing I’m not alone here, judging from the explosion of fabrics this past two years, put out in limited edition, one-of-a-kind fabric lines that quickly sell out, leaving room for newer arrays to tempt us quilters.
I did finish another quilt this fall, but I couldn’t really write about it because it was a Christmas gift for my daughter-in-law, Kristen. I did give a sneak peek *here* when I held it up at Quilt Night, but here’s a lovely picture of lovely Kristen on Christmas morning with her quilt.
She says she loves it, and that makes me happy. I guess when I look back, I have worked in type of series, but just not a creative-push-the-edge type series. I made the green quilt, then the pinky-orange quilt, then this blue quilt. I went for the modern-style pattern of lots of “empty ground” with the white, letting the fabrics come forward.
Whether working in a series or not, perhaps the bigger and more important issue is to keep on working?
