Feeling the fear and doing it anyway...

I have many quilt tops that have been sitting quite a while waiting patiently to be quilted, occasionally I can hear them calling to me as they want to be quilted and promoted to being out of the cupboard.

I have been procrastinating over quilting these quilts, but I am beginning to feel totally blocked by them as there are lots of ideas for new quilts in my head and I know that I can't begin them until I have dealt with this pile. I am also aware that I have an opportunity of time at the moment to deal with these now and that opportunity is fast running out. 

One of the reasons also for my procrastination is that four of these quilt tops are for gifts for very special people in my life that mean a lot to me and I want to do the best job that I can do on their quilts. A lot of time and money has been invested in these tops already and I am scared I will stuff it up as I haven't machine quilted for a while now.

So I pondered on this and decided that I needed to do some practice, but I really don't see the point in practicing on a practice sandwich. 

I am not sure when I created this little wall hanging, but it was my version of machine stitching or thread play and at the time that I created it I was quite happy with it. However lately I keep looking at it and can't help but think that it needs some updating. I used this as my practice piece and this is the result.

This is the result of my practicing and I learnt a lot through doing this. I started by doing the lines in the petals with variegated thread but this drew up the fabric around the flowers, so I had to work out what I was going to do in the background to even it out a little. The background also needed to be a design that was completely different to the flowers otherwise they wouldn't stand out. Circles seemed to be just the right thing. Then the borders desperately needed some taming so I flicked through my book to get some inspiration and decided on the continual curves around the edges.

I purchased Angela Walters book a few years ago now to help me through the inspiration slumps that happen when you are machine quilting and for when I don't know what to do next. I find that it definitely helps me work out what my options are.

I am happy with the end result, it isn't perfect but it is done and I am much further ahead than I would have been if I had done nothing and let the procrastination continue. I felt the fear and I did it anyway and I feel better equipped to tackle the pile of quilt top that are waiting for their turn at the machine.

I love getting your feed back so please feel welcome to leave a comment.

Until next time

happy stitching everyone.

Donna-Maree