I cannot explain just how excited a pile of beautiful fabrics in deep colors and saturation levels makes me. It almost sounds obscene to describe it. I suspect it begins with the drooling greed we feel for a new box of crayons at age 6 or the giddy thought of walking through an art supply store with a pocket full of money and a summer of no obligations! It is positively heady and I am drunk with it. (Does this mean I am supposed to be an artist?)
Some quilters worry about the circumstance of having more fabric than they have years left in their life to finish sewing. I worry that I will not have enough energy to get all the fabric hauled back to my house that I can discover, fall in love with and purchase! (Lucky for me these fabric bundles of potential are often cast off, completely undervalued by others or perhaps from collections that outlived their dreamy owners! ) No, but really this is about that feeling of true and real potential. I simply love that feeling! The feeling that these lovely piles of cloth offer endless potential of creating anything I can imagine and pull off. I continually feel that with enough inspiration and time that could be literally anything. Me, my fabric stash, my machine and the sky is the limit! My endless belief in my future skill dovetails with this passion for potential. While I am wildly imaginative, I am not a highly skilled craftsperson, so it is kind of funny when I sit back and think of it. The level of optimism here is off the charts. (I think it means I am meant to be an artist)
It is more than a mad passion for raw material. There is a mood around here when the kids are done with school for the year, homeschooling duties on hiatus, huge chunks of free time carved out, my confidence and inspiration flowing, I dive into my piles of potential. Add a little Attention Deficit into this mix and I have crafting periods that begin with six projects at once. That is exactly what this collection is, my early June 2016 projects.
Draped across my sewing table right now is a queen size quilt I am making for my daughter, a random anything goes quilt for my living room, a baby quilt in progress, a baby quilt that needs repair laying over stacks and stacks of grouped fabric for multiple projects and random finds layered into that mix. I sometimes alternate during a day and sometimes alternate projects on days and sometimes in one sitting I will work on several projects at once all while eyeing the piles that surround me. ADQD. I call it Attention Deficit Quilting Disorder.
My sewing style often feels messy, overwhelming and strange. The magic number of projects for me to have in progress at any given time is 3-5. Any less and I start digging through my stacks while I am working on a quilt! I have to entertain the reality that I am a chaotic lunatic (who thinks she is an artist) OR that this is a direct outgrowth of my absolute passion for the lurking, fantastical, just ready to be revealed potential in every pile of fabric. I am simply in love with the undiscovered ‘masterpieces’ waiting to be brought to life and apparently too impatient to reveal them one at a time.
“Its alive! It’s alive!”