Happiness (and a sigh of relief…)

This is what happens when I’ve been piecing for a few days and just can’t stand it anymore …

I grab any random fabric on my shelf that isn’t already earmarked for a quilt (and, of course, because I’m not a big stasher, that’s a challenge!), throw together a small quilt sandwich (about 32″ X 34″), crank up my tunes and just quilt, quilt, quilt.  I added the word “happiness” to my project because that is exactly what I experience when I’m doing it 🙂

I can’t even describe to you in words what a relief it was to just QUILT.  The struggle is real, my friends.  I joke about it lots, but it’s seriously a challenge for me.  I’m constantly trying to get things pieced together so I can quilt because my quilting time is like a drug.  A good drug, though, like laughter or big long hugs 🙂  I’m not sure which chemicals free motion quilting releases in my brain, but whatever they are, I NEED THEM!  And while the open edge-to-edge designs can be fun for a bit, it’s the crazy detailed intricate stuff that takes me from zero to a hundred in sixty seconds …

This just under two hour period was a totally spontaneous stitching time and it definitely got me to the other side of my piecing malaise.  Of course, I wouldn’t put this much detail onto a printed fabric for a “real” quilt, but this was the biggest small piece I could find in a pinch so I just chose orange thread that would show up for me as I worked.

I even went a little hippie in one section!

Look closely and you will see my initial.

I’m almost finished piecing a quilt top that seemed like a good idea when I started, it’s bright and pretty, it’s made from a fabric line I really like, and I’m going to have lots of fun quilting it (it has several solid white sections for me to play in) but WOW it’s just one of “those”.  I did one of “those” a while back and apparently my memory is very short because the first one took me down too!

Funny thing:  you piecers out there who have to renovate to make room for more fabric and patterns, spend days putting together little triangles that make me cross-eyed, and sometimes pile up quilt tops because you’d rather sew them together than actually quilt them, will see it when it’s done and think it’s hardly anything at all.

And that, my quilting friends, is what makes each of us unique.

While I’m over the piecing gloom that threatened my serenity today, I think I still need to go back to my machine and stitch out a few more ideas because even talking about this much piecing is giving me a headache …  LOL