Going Forward by Going Back

 

Five years ago I made this quilt using Sujata Shah's Cultural Fusion Quilts as a guide.

What was funny at the time was that it started out like this, and I thought, well that was ugly as hell, so I tinkered.

I am so emotionally tired (and I am pretty sure I am not the only one) but I need to get myself into the studio because doing creative work makes me feel better. I got to thinking about this quilt the other day because I showed somebody a calendar I had made with the Petals quilt (top photo) and was reminded of how much I liked it.

It's no secret I need to do something, but I don't feel drawn to any of the quotes I shared the other day enough to make a quilt out of any of them right at this minute. I know myself well enough to know that if I don't "feel it" it won't go anywhere. So the other night, instead of going to bed, I browsed my books in search of ideas, and ended up with the quilt above.

I pulled out this fabric with the dots. I bought it a while ago, and it's a hard fabric to use, but I liked the way the colors bounced around. Something like this can be more of an inspiration than a fabric in a quilt, and that's exactly what it inspired. You can see some of the fabrics I pulled out of my stash above it.

I pulled some pinky fabrics - but they all had to have some blue or green in them.

And I need some beige, cream, or whatever.

And because, what the hell, in for a penny in for a pound, so even though it was 11 PM, I cut some squares and then sewed these two blocks.

I have my next project.