Changing Course - My Mindset on Two Projects - How I think/What I am doing

I went through a lot of things in my sewing room and found some very old zipper top bags of blocks with a picture showing what I thought I should make with the blocks inside. I really wanted to move these out of the sewing room - but as a finished top. I think I designed them many years ago now. Many. I don’t even know when.

Obviously something about what I thought I should do didn’t “do it” for me since I hadn’t finished the quilt tops.

Let me show you each one and explain what was happening.

The first one

The first one - I had the framed 4 patch blocks made but the second block wasn’t made yet - all the pieces were there. Did I really want to fiddle around making those blocks? Ones I am not even that taken with?

I did not.

I came back to the computer and decided that I needed to rework something and go ahead and use up those blocks - as I mean, they were already ready!

I wanted to make something I wanted to make! Not something I dreaded.

Now these aren’t really exciting blocks - they are just random 2.5” squares that I made 4 patches with and then framed them in white. These blocks were ALL finished when I relocated these packages of quilt blocks ready to go. I had no real coordination either color or shades or anything. I might do it differently now as I think if I worked with a more limited color scheme, the quilt could be more amazing. But these were done before…so now it’s just time to finish them up.

So, I went back to my old classic style that I actually TOTALLY enjoy making and that is a chain quilt.

I had planned with this block that I would make a sort of donut type look block that looked like that. The pieces are already in the bag, but the blocks were not made. I couldn’t get exited about making them. Not even a little bit. That was this.

So here it is.

This first picture is the layout I had already. The problem with it is that the quilt doesn’t go anywhere. There is nothing interesting in it. I’m trying to make my quilts more interesting either with shading or colors, or design. This had none of it. The second one is now what I’m going to do. I may play with the coloration of the chain blocks still, but I hope to use a lot of my fabrics that have some color in the background - I just have so many of those strips that I want to use. Obviously I’m not using the donut pieces which haven’t been put into blocks yet - but the pieces are there in that bag - not sure what I will do with those.

I’ll get a photo and put it here. I’m pretty uninspired by them, but maybe something will hit me. I’m tempted to toss them into my husband’s kindling pile.

The second one

The second group of things in my second zipper top bag was a bunch of strips of 4 squares sewn together and a few already all in a 16 patch. I also had a design that was interesting, but really it was just the sashing/cornerstone combo that was interesting. But difficult! Let me show you.

Did I feel like this complicated for a cornerstone block? I was not interested. Obviously since those strips have been sitting for several years in my sewing room, I wasn’t REALLY interested even when I had just designed it.

Once again, these strips were not well coordinated and very blah. I wanted to do something way more fun with the colors of the alternate blocks, so this is what I did. I threw out the idea of that cornerstone effect and replaced it also with a simple uneven 9 patch block. Put together, there is once again, a chain effect which, if you know me at all, you know I like chains patterns in quilts.

I went ahead and finished up those strips and made 56 blocks which are 8.5” square.

I changed the design to look like this:

I will use my strips from my 1.5” cut strips for those little cornerstone blocks and I hope to pull from my white based strips with some color on it for all the background of the uneven 9 patches and sashings. For those I will pull from the 2.5” bag - which is a big one!

After doing these - I’m having some revelations about these scraps. I’m trying to focus on more planned colors - even with these scrappy quilts - and I can’t help but think how much nicer some of these quilts would be if I had kept the pieces to two or three colors - such as pink, yellow, orange, or blue, green, purple, etc. But this was then. I’m going to finish these up.

I’ve found that 2.5” squares or strips blocks are faster to make - quite a bit faster, in fact - than those 2” ones.

I’m only showing these to you because I think sometimes people think ideas just come and come. Well, they do - I have plenty more for this 2.5” series but it all takes time - AND focus and energy. Sometimes I just want to do something else. Sometimes I need to do something else. :)

Thanks so much for coming along with me on this journey.

Have a great day wherever you are reading this.


Becky Petersen3 Comments