Ta Da!

This is the culprit I was working on when I hit the wall last week and slumped all over the floor of my sewing room, questioning the meaning of life and speculating upon the futility of quilting. Weird, huh? But once I picked myself up, dusted off all the snipped threads, and got busy making covers for my chair, I put that little episode behind me and moved on. Now I have this one done and I'm ready, I think, to start playing around with some charm packs and a few lengths of fabric. Maybe it's hormonal. Are there quilting hormones, I wonder?

One thing about my quilting that's been bugging me for a long time is the idea that I've lost my focus. When I started quilting, I was very sure about what I liked and didn't like. I knew my quilting time was limited, and I'd darn well better concentrate on making only the things that really appealed to me. I rarely used anyone else's patterns, and if I did, I usually changed them quite a bit. Applique particularly appealed to me because I could design whatever I wanted and my quilts wouldn't look like any others. Somewhere along the line, I lost that focus. I started liking just about everything, and I wanted to make just about everything--and I thought I could, apparently! Instead of being drawn to a narrow color and tonal pallet, my color sensibilities expanded. While particular colors and patterns still appeal to me and others still don't, it's that middle range--the stuff I could live with but didn't LOVE--that seems to have worked its way into my stash and my quilts.

I've had this little talk with myself before and resolved to get back on track but somehow, before I know it, I'm back to drooling all over the pages of quilt magazines and catalogues, wanting to make everything I see. And then when I start a quilt, I'm in a rush to get it finished so I can move onto the next whim. Darn quilting hormones again, I'm sure!

I'm not sure how to change this behavior, but I think that sometime in the next few months, I'm going to have to find a way to do that. My husband asked yesterday whether I was going to put any of my quilts in the State Fair this year, and I told him I wasn't--for the second or third year in a row. The reason? Because I haven't made anything for awhile that I would consider unique and different enough to bother with. As you may imagine, by now I have plenty of "utility quilts" to cover each and every one of my beds a couple layers deep, so why keep making them? I'm starting to feel a little like the girl in high school who sleeps with every guy on the football team! Darn quilting hormones!