A Little Detour

I know I told you I'd show you what other projects I worked on this past weekend, but that will have to wait until another day because I wanted to talk a little bit about Thimbleberries Club and the project for the first quarter of the year.

I've always enjoyed Thimbleberries--the patterns and the fabrics. While I'm not quite as much drawn to the darker, trademark Thimbleberries colors as I used to be, over the years Lynette Jensen has broadened the Thimbleberries color palate by bringing lighter shades into her spring and summer fabric lines, and the fabrics for the first quarter (spring) projects this year are no exception--pink, purple, green, and a yellowish cream.

We quilters in Thimbleberries Club also joke that Thimbleberries quilts are so large because they often consist of border upon border upon border, but Lynette Jensen's block designs are often quite fun--like the floral block in this quarter's pattern. Here's a look at this quarter's quilt, called Love Me Tender--

The quilt is a nice size for a table topper, small lap quilt, or a wallhanging, so it's quite useful. Last year in club, we made a BOM-type of quilt--and I didn't make the quilt. So it's been a little while since I worked on a Thimbleberries project, and I'm already behind this year--our March meeting is this week and not only do I not have the second section done, but I hadn't even started the first section that everyone showed at the last meeting. So on Sunday, I got busy making the center blocks--

A funny thing happened tonight, though. As I was adding the border/sashing around the four blocks, I remembered what I don't like about Thimbleberries Club quilts. As much as I like this quilt pattern and fabric, I suddenly remembered that hundreds of women--if not thousands--were making the same quilt as I was, using the same fabrics and the same pattern.

Yeah, that's something I've never really liked about Thimbleberries Club--and I'd totally forgotten about that!

So now I don't know. I didn't want to sew the four blocks together and move onto the next section until I thought about it a bit more, because of course I want to do something different--something so I'll be able to tell my quilt apart from the hundreds of other Love Me Tender quilts being made right now. I moved the blocks around on the design wall.

I do enjoy diagonal sets and I thought I might run something like flying geese blocks between the four floral blocks. But what will I do in the corners? I have no idea. And will my shop have more of the fabric if I need it? I guess I'm going to have to stop sewing at this point and start doing a little more thinking. And maybe looking at quilt books or magazines for ideas and inspiration.

Sometimes I think life would be so much easier if I just went along with the program. Then again, sometimes I DO go along with the program and later I wonder why--what happened to my creativity? In the long run, though, I find I'm usually happier if I step out of that "hurry up and get it done as fast as possible" mind set and invite my creative side to come out and play a little instead. I'll keep you posted about what I come up with on this project.