A Prairie Home Quilts

Much like Meg Ryan’s character in You’ve Got Mail, I’m not expecting  any answers–I’m just sending these comments and questions off into the cosmic void.  [I'm not even bothering to put them into coherent paragraphs...]  It’s become apparent to me that I enjoy starting new projects more than finishing old ones.   Okay, that fact has been apparent to me for a couple of decades actually…  but I do finish things. Eventually. What I should say is that this has become more of a concern during recent weeks. I have noticed lately that I further procrastinate on finishing old projects by continuing to dream up and start more and more new projects.  [Who needs patterns and magazines when your brain is overflowing with ideas??  I fell asleep the other day thinking of a pattern for a Christmas tree skirt and woke up with a pattern idea for kitchen accessories too.]  What’s even more problematic is that recently I’ve started cutting out several new projects without even beginning to sew the last projects I cut out–ones that were just started within the last few weeks.  Is it an obssession? A new disease?  Why do I enjoy dreaming up new ideas, figuring the yardage, and printing and/or cutting the fabric bits for these projects?  Why am I then letting these new projects  languish at that point??  And then starting another project??? Is there a point where your WIP and UFO list, like a fabric stash and number of question marks at the end of a sentence, becomes utterly ridiculous?   Who determines that point anyway? Or is all of this because I have these three other little non-quilting projects to do that I’m totally avoiding? Is starting more and more projects a way to feel too busy to do the non-quilting projects?  I know it’s one way to avoid doing housework. Am I afraid that once I lower the presser foot to the fabric that I won’t be able to quit until I have half a dozen projects  to the completed top stage?  [Hey, I've done my share of quilt binging.]  But then I’d really be behind on those non-quilting projects.  Which would probably cause me to want to start even more projects! That’s it!  I’m a quilt binger or a quiltaholic or something.  Hmmm.  Actually, I think I just answered my own questions… [Thank you, Cosmic Void.] Yes, I’d much rather do the fun stuff and only the fun stuff. I need to get motivated to finish up those three computer-related, non-quilting projects.  And yet I have no valid excuse for not doing them.   It’s funny to me that they are computer projects that are quilting related but not quilting projects.  And, get this…  I’ve started those three projects… just haven’t finished them. I think I need a taskmaster–someone to tell me what I should be doing when and making sure I get it done.  My mother would be a good candidate.  Nevermind.  I’d surely rebel and run for the hills screaming. Perhaps just some dark chocolate would help.

While I was sitting at my desk, I looked up at my inspiration board with family pictures and was inspired to do another four letter word block for Tonya.  I decided it would be good to do another block for more practice, and because I wanted to do a word that no one else had done.  [Something about the need to be original? Unique? Who knows.] After I finished the block, all I can say is that I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to do wonky letters and I’m sure it’s all the fault of my elementary school teachers.

Yes, it’ll definitely take several years of therapy for my brain to do wonky. You see, in elementary school every year I received the dreaded “N” for penmanship.  “N” as in needs improvement, not satisfactory, not up to par, not normal, nasty and a whole slew of other negative “N” words.  Once in sixth grade, my teacher held up my paper in front of the whole class as a messy example of what a paper should not look like.  I was mortified… wanted to die… felt like I was standing in front of the whole class in my underwear.  [Mr. Gross if you're out there, you should be paying for my therapy!]

So where am I going with this you ask?  Well, because I was traumatized and humiliated for my penmanship [hey, it's not like I wasn't trying to do my best!] I decided to show up those negative Nellies and Neds. In Junior High [Middle School for those of you under 50], I worked really hard at improving my handwriting. I filled notebooks with my handwriting practice. I spent many hours writing 10, 20 & 30 page letters every week to my BFF. I even spent several years graffiti-ing everything in sight with block letters. Block letters with stripes, polka dots, and drop shadows.  Lots of L-O-V-E in the shape of a heart.  [The school custodians must have loved washing my artwork off the desks everyday.]

Yup, I practiced so hard that now my penmanship is too neat and as a result, I’m having a hard time doing wonky. That’s got to be the reason. It’s certainly not because I have an organized, neat freak personality. [No offense to any organized neat freaks who might be reading this.  Really.  I have two children who are organized neat freaks and I love them anyway.]  So Tonya, here is my second, four letter, unwonky word block for you.

A nice, neat [big, fat?] KISS.

As you can see, I still like going all the way to the edge with my letters.  I’m not sure what that says about me, but I’m sure it says something.

Here is my “home” block for Tonya’s four letter word quilt.  You can see some of the wonky words she’s received for the quilt so far here.  As you can tell by looking at my block I was still having difficulty doing wonky after the unwonkiness of “pray.”  [Yes, I'm making up words now.] The letters are still quite uniform and pretty much the same size across the block.   It was a bit harder to put these letters together because Tonya wanted all the blocks to be fairly uniform in size so she gave a block measurement to use as a guideline.  I do like going all the way to the top and bottom of the block with the letters for some reason. I probably wouldn’t  have put the strip on the bottom if it weren’t for the block needing to be 6 1/2″ tall.  It is much easier to make the letters and let the word be the size it ends up.

On the wall opposite my design wall is this:

My inspiration board looks a little bare, don’t you think? Not that I haven’t been inspired lately to be creative. . .  My goal for this though was to be filled with a bit more than family photos.  I want to fill it with notes and pictures that make me feel good & want to be more creative as I sit and ponder its contents.  Let’s see if I can add some stuff to it over the next 4 weeks to accomplish that!

Are you inspired visually?

Do you have an inspiration board?

What’s on it?

At least, I think it’s a quilt from the 30′s. The fabrics look like the reproduction ones available today. I found this quilt at a local flea market for $25. I’m sure the quilt police would be after me if they knew what I was going to do with it, but it’s destined to be cut up and used as backdrop in vintage wooden window frames and the rest made into pillows. In defense of my actions, I will say there is a number of large rips and many places where the fabric is completely worn away. (Yeah, yeah, I know some of you aren’t going for it. . .) *smile*

I like the way the quiltmaker mixed the large and small dresden plates together. Click on the pictures to enlarge them so you can see the fabrics better.

It looks like the quilting is some sort of chain pattern around each plate and then it’s repeated in the first border.

I *love* the way the outside border uses the pieces of the small dresden plates. . .

and the way it just curves right around the corners. Sewing on the binding took some work!

No quilting makes a quilting blog rather dull. I haven’t done any personal quilting in over 8 weeks and even the quilting I’m committed to doing for others has been a little sparse so I don’t have any pictures to show. (My feeling of apathy is making me look like a flake, but unfortunately my apathy won’t let me care either.)

I thought I’d share a few links to Barn Quilts. If you haven’t seen them, they are old barns with 8′ x 8′ quilt squares on them. I think they are really neat but then, I like old barns AND quilts. It seems these barns have become tourist attractions with bus tours and everything. This Ohio old barn website has quilt barn pictures from Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Tennessee as well as other types of barn photos.

These are a few of my favorites:

If I ever make it back to NY to fulfill my homesteader-wannabe-wishes, and my property has an old barn, I’m going to have to have an 8′ x 8′ quilt square on it.

I’ve been busy organizing other areas of my life and haven’t really done much on the quilting home front. [sadly] This week’s goals are a repeat of last week’s as I didn’t do anything quilty. I *did* make good progress on getting organized so that I can tell at a glance what needs to be done next for each project in other areas of my life. In other words, I made lots of lists. LOL If you’ve spent any time browsing around this blog, you can tell I like to make lists…

I haven’t found the CD of an OOP book that I was revising that started this whole “mission organization” process but I now have an “action board” that lists each step of my projects (quilty or otherwise) and a new notebook for keeping notes and outlines for each non-quilty project. (Call me obsessed.)