“What do you do with the stitching? Are they in quilts?”
Good questions both, and answering them seems a good idea.
Some stitching is practice. Practice? Yes, I still practice. While I have a good handle on thread, batting, needles, stitching motifs, there is still more to know, more to improve. So sometimes the quilting that I share is practice. Time for me to stitch is somewhat, no a lot, limited at the moment so any time I have to practice, to keep my quilting chops is priceless. I practice for the same reason Misty Copeland practices, to warm up, to learn a dance, to keep dancing. As far as I’m concerned, with as many hours I have at the machine, if I don’t stitch I lose something of the rhythm of quilting.
And then there’s this quote from Pablo Casals, “I think I’m making progress. I see some improvement.”
So sometimes there is nothing that happens with these pieces other than giving me the necessary time to keep the skill that I have. I am keeping the skill that I have. There are moments I see improvement. There are moments I would love to toss the sewing machine through the glass of the window for an oddly satisfying break of the glass, with a crash of the sewing machine on the ground, hopefully into a bejillion and one hundred pieces. Thankfully those moments pass, the machine lives, as do I.
So this piece that I shared has a dual purpose 1) practice, and 2) color exploration. My goal with this is to finish it. I love orange, I’m enjoying how it’s playing on its color complement of blue. I’d probably be downright giddy if this were purple, however the complement is great to play with.
And I shared yesterday what I’m doing with the current stitching. You can read more about that here. And why I’m making “Let Your Light Shine” over on Pokey Bolton’s Crafting a Life.
One last thing, sometimes I just like to play, or think. Free-motion gives me the space, and joy to do both.
