first one done

photo.JPG by Rachel @ 2nd Avenue Studio
photo.JPG, a photo by Rachel @ 2nd Avenue Studio on Flickr.

well, my first Charity Quilt for the year is done. Its not bound but its off the quilter and trimmed.
Im happy about that. I need to be quilting a couple of these a month to stay on track. I've been slacking. Doing other things and other projects. I used this as a practice piece for my Sticks and Stones Quilt that I'm about to quilt.

What I'm working on today

Im loving all this color. It's got zip, zing, pow!
Ive just thrown the blocks up on the design wall and Im working away. Some may have to be edited out (sorry henna garden, I love you but maybe not for this project), but over all I'm excited to see where this goes.
Quilters Rock!

Edit! Redo! and Revisit!



So, I had been working on these letters. Using some of my favorite fabrics, it was going gang busters. Then, BAM! I realized I didn't have enough room. It wasn't working, Some letters were too thick and others, as my skills grew or by luck, were artful and delicate.
I sat and looked at it for a couple of days and came to the conclusion that this project was shelved. Oh I'll go back to letters and may even do this project but I need to edit my out the losers and remake a fair portion.
I do this alot, start a project, learn a skill ( like letters) struggle with it, then drop it.  Going back a while late later and finally finishing something happens too. 

So this is on my pile... I'll cannibalize it for parts I'm sure and the strings I have can go back to the string drawer.  And once I've processed the lessons learned, I'll return to letters and make something I'm proud of.
I had a ceramics teacher who was a fanatic about editing. He thought it was wasteful not to recycle projects that sucked. Why fire and glaze something that in 2 months your eyes would outgrow?
Now that I have a several years of quilting under my belt I can more clearly see the my own need to edit my first tries. To get the fluff out of the way and get to the better quilt that is lurking behind that fluff. I struggle to find that space that captures whimsical improvisation and artful piecing, while leaving out that clunky forced look of homemade crafting. 

So now you what I'm not working on. What am I doing?  Playing with some Liberty Scraps, going to the dog park, hanging out with my elder,  playing with 60degree triangles and teaching classes over at Modern Domestic.





Quilters Rock!