Quilting & Learning - What a Combo!: charm

Sunday, January 19, 2020

More slow stitching, meditation style

I've been doing some more slow stitching. This time with a little meditative quiet time added in.

Slow stitching, meditation style

In the October/November edition of the Quilting Arts magazine, I read an article that spoke to me. The article, Stitch Meditation, by Liz Kettle talked about meditating while stitching, since she found that regular meditation didn't really work for her. Wow! I've been trying to meditate and find it one of the most painful things to do. Quieting the mind is really difficult, except when I'm immersed in my quilting, or playing with code! Since I rarely play with code except occasionally at work, my best bet is probably stitching and quilting.

First four meditation squares

In the article, Liz says that she only has a few guidelines and one rule.

Avoid planning - choose your supplies quickly (less than 5 minutes)
Minimize distractions (for the meditative part)
The one rule: don't undo stitches - there is no need for perfection

Liz does talk about doing this every day, but I'm staying away from that since I don't need another commitment that I won't follow. I do it when I remember and when I feel like it. I trust that I will remember to do it when I need it.

I've cut up a bunch of 4" flannel squares from a dearly loved flannel blanket. I use this as my backing. For the fabric on top, I have a small bag of my hand-dyed fabrics. They are really perfect for this.

Angles is made with hand-dyed fabrics and stitched with several weights of thread and embroidery floss.

Angles

Green & Blue with bark includes an unraveling piece of dyed fabric, thread and wool, and two pieces of hand-dyed that friends though was bark .

Green & Blue with bark

The moon in Pretty moon and star was made of pieces of felt from the backing of my daughter's embroidery pieces. The stones are pretty pink quartz and the star is a Murano glass bead bought in Venice last year.

Pretty moon and star

For Shining rose, I cut up a hand-dyed cloth napkin that I had embroidered a very long time ago. I added shiny ribbon that I save up when I buy things. I also used some metallic floss.

Shining rose

Last week I started this piece. I was in the mood for ruffles so I just took another fabric piece and stitched it on. I used sewing thread, embroidery floss and even did some chain stitch. I like the look of the feather charm.

Orange, pink and a feather

If you've seen my Flower of Life piece for the first challenge of Project Quilting last week, you will see where I got the inspiration for this block. Now that I know about the Flower of Life, I see it everywhere! In this block, I did some embroidery, including fly stitches without tails, and added beads.

Web in the Flower of Life

What I learned

Making these blocks is really meditative.
I often start with fabric or embellishment from a recent project.
I really don't plan what I'll be doing. If I have some embellishments that I want to use, I'll make the block around them. Otherwise I take a piece of fabric and start stitching.
Some of the blocks were finished the same day I started them, but others took a couple of days working on them. They usually take about an hour to make.
I don't name the blocks when I make them - but it's fun to name them when I'm saving the images on the computer.

What's on this week

Today Challenge 11.2 of Project Quilting came out - something about Team Colours. I'll have to think about that since nothing jumps to mind. The project is due next Sunday morning - so I'll be working on that this week!
Join me on Tuesday for my post in The Winter Blues Blog Hop hosted by Carla of Creatin' in the Sticks. My piece is done but I have to figure out how to bind it....????
I will also be hosting Free Motion Mavericks on Thursday - so come back and link up your post - it doesn't have to be FMQ.

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Sunday, January 19, 2020

More slow stitching, meditation style

First Quilt-Along