It is another new year and only five degrees out this mourning. Doesn’t cold weather make you want to quilt more? Dead of winter is a great time to hand quilt. While you are making another creation the quilt you are working on is wrapped around you keeping you warm. Just the thought of it makes me feel warm and fuzzy all over. This year one of my goals is to enter more of my art quilts into different art quilt venues. One of the issues that I always confront is confidence in my own designs. Will anyone like them and can I do them perfect. Usually artist create for themselves. It comes from somewhere inside of them it will develop as each piece is applied, but another part of the process is being critiqued by their peers. This helps the artist fine tune their their art piece. One of the quilts I am working on right now is what I call “Pheasant habitat picture”. The background for the piece is painted in fall colors with a striking sunset. I was working on the pheasant that would be in the forefront of the quilt. As I drew it out and set it where I think it would look the best for scene, my husband comments “It doesn’t look right.” I asked him why and he said “because I have never seen a pheasant in a tree.” So here is what I learned. This quilt is about hunting bird and birds in their habitat but to make it anatomically correct would take away from the whole sense of what you want to accomplish. Sometimes you first thought of the original design is the right one. His comments made me realize that it wasn’t about correctness so to speak but about the whole look of the design. I think this is important when we work on our quilt creations. When you get stalled with an idea and before you put into the stalled pile ask a couple of your quilting buddies to help you over the hump of “The what do I do next stage”. Chances are they will give you lots of ideas for your current project and who knows it might spark the idea for the next one. I have three quilting buddies that critique my work and they are invaluable, and yes one of them is my husband. So let’s make 2014 be a banner year for trying new concepts and pushing ourselves to be more creative and productive. After all a blessing isn’t a blessing till we share it…..
Happy New Year…..Karen