Quilting Play

With new focus I spent my two quilting days off determined to make significant progress on the dahlia quilt and Vintage Charm.  Instead, I gave myself a stomach ache and a bit of a complex.  Welcome to my slightly bipolar relationship with my quilts!  GAH!  I don't know if it's pregnancy hormones but I was just so frustrated and upset this morning.  I am feeling quilters guilt - I have several intense projects that I've been working on that I have tied up a lot of time and money in and I want so much to finish them.  I won't say that they won't be completed - but I as much as I want to be into them - I'm not.  It's not a joyful experience...and have you ever noticed to create good quality work you have to really enjoy it?  At least that's the truth for me.

In any case I think I needed a break.  I needed to relax and just have fun.  My strength is quilting and playing  at the sewing machine is where I find real happiness.  So I pulled out some scrap fabrics and scrap batting and Glide thread...

...and finally had some fun!  This is some of the purple fabric I hand dyed two summers ago.  There are spots of blue interspersed with purple...the back seems to have more blue than purple so it's really fun to look at both sides of this little experiment.

The purple and gold piece was actually the second portion of play.  I began using scraps of green fabric from my dahlia quilt to see what it might look like if I attempt to create a lacy quilting pattern using black Glide thread.  I love the look - and I think I love the quilting more than the dahlia quilt top.  I am unsettled about that quilt top.  I don't know what I will end up doing with it - I'd really like to finish it, but time will tell.

After having such a frustrating morning where I really felt like I was forcing myself with a quilt - this was almost a relief.  To really enjoy myself and enjoy the outcome.  Tomorrow I have a house to clean (yick) and a client quilt to work on (yay!) so I will set these aside for a bit.