Why?

My friend Megan, who lives in Sydney Australia, asked about my plans for the chicken quilt once I finished it.

My response: "I have no idea."

Megan wrote back, "I was just curious, Lynne. You invest a lot of time and thought and skill in your quilts, so I wondered whether you used their eventual use (eg, gift for someone special) as a motivator to keep solving the problems/challenges, or whether the satisfaction is sufficient in itself."



It's an excellent question. I like making quilts. I love solving the problems and challenges they present. I call it "cracking the nut."
 
When I was making the Sunburst Rainbow quilt, I sewed two rows together wrong. Oops. How could I make that work?

It looked good, so I just kept going. When I saw something else that looked good, I changed direction and incorporated that too.

How could I make the FUN interesting on Julie's quilt? The words "Miss the fun..." kept going around and around in my head. MISS the fun... what about if I made some hidden FUNS in the quilt? You could miss them...

How could I keep the brown background in the Black Box quilt interesting while I used only one fabric throughout? The scraps on my table gave me the answer... made fabric.

How can I convey the concept of TOO MUCH CHICKEN without saying "too much chicken?" I could play with the letters... so I tilted the second A in SALAD.

I could also make the letters jump around, look like they're sleeping or just leave some out.

None of that answers Megan's basic question. WHY?

I am not happy unless I am creating something. To create means to make something new, to look at something differently, to solve a puzzle, to make a discovery, to explore "what if." Having pushed all those boundaries, doing "normal" is dull, dull, dull. Sure, I've made predictable quilts, and I've used quilts in books as inspiration for the routine quilts that I do make, but I always tweak it somewhere along the line, break some rule somewhere, do my own thing. It's not an Ego thing. I don't need to "leave my mark." I just see things and I wonder "what if..." and I follow the idea where it leads me.

For me, it's all about process. I love to create. It's as simple as that. I do it because it gives me great joy.