Growing, Evolving & Quilting

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart ... Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.

Carl Jung

I would be the first to admit, I could have never imagined myself quilting.  I always saw quilting as fussy, tedious and complicated, which I pride myself on being none of those things (insert laughter).  The current interest in quilting from Modern Quilting Guilds and fresh fun quilting blogs intrigued me but I was still far too intimidated to try it for myself.  But while trying to hire a few new team members at the shop the funniest thing happened.  I realized that I was trying to hire the person I was intimidated to become.  A fabric enthusiast who loves modern, bright, cheerful quilting.  Now, I am a fabric enthusiast and I do adore modern, bright, cheerful quilts - this is true.  But love QUILTING - that was the missing piece.

I started playing around with the idea of quilting a few months ago.  A bed runner for my daughter, simple and sweet.  Then a Christmas quilt for the shop.  Then a quilt for a dear friends little baby.  Ok, not too bad but they were very, very easy quilts.  Playing around with quilting and playing it safe.  Super simple quilts that required almost no technique at all, but it's what I needed to get comfortable with the idea of quilting.  My quilts were nothing like the ones I admired and adored while scrolling through pinterest, reading moda bakeshop or any of the other blogs I obsessively read.

Then came the interviews, and while there were a couple of applicants that had the style I was looking for, for one reason or another they didn't work out for the shop.  Believing that all things happen for the purpose of teaching us to learn and grow I had to stop and ask myself what is the lesson here.  And the lesson was clear, I needed to grow and become the quilter that I adored and admired.  A quilting enthusiast that didn't have to be perfect to enjoy the process.

So my journey has started again, first my little elephant quilt that has mitered boarders slightly unaligned.  It's hanging in the shop as my testimony to loving the imperfect.  It's bright, cheerful, modern and a little wonky - just like it's maker.  And then there's my newest creation, which I am so deeply proud of - it's almost finished and almost perfectly aligned.  Though my journey is only beginning I am loving it and learning something new about myself.