Day 1

My plans for the day were to quilt on one of my pieces for my Jane class and then work on another piece of my Jane class.  But when I got to the studio, I thought I have 4 days in a row (which seems big to me now!) and I have these color shift ideas that I'm seeing big. 

So, I decided to push things a bit and start something brand new, knowing that I would fill in with my Jane work.  Starting something big and brand new, not playing it safe with my homework, and not playing it safe by choosing not to work at the day job on Monday all contributed to accessing my adventure value.  That was why I was so pumped yesterday.  Note to self.

I used to access my adventure value by travelling alone and doing other fun stuff like canoeing and camping on the river overnight by myself.  Clearly, I am getting old if living on the edge is pushing deadlines and missing a paycheck for a day! 

I mentally went through a check list of how I was going to proceed and then decided to actually write down these choices.  What was different for me is that I chose the easiest option for each item. 

For these quilts--I see two that are playing with each other--I am using cotton because it is less slippery than silk and easier to manage the way I'm handling the finishing.

I chose wool batting because it is the loft that I want and is so easy to cut and hold its shape.  The other choice I have been using lately is easy, too--felt.

I chose invisble thread as I didn't want to work about matching subtle color shifts.  And I know I'll make other choices in the future for thread, both color matching and color contrasting.

The sizes that I chose are skinny enough to not have to sew pieces of fabric together.  That choice was made for simplicity sake.

The colors were tough to choose. I could sketch and visualize the shapes of the quilts in my head, but not how the colors would play with each other. So I painted several varieties.

In the past, I would have just jumped in mixed up some dye and threw it on the fabric and hoped for the best.  But I guess I value good results more than fast results, because not only did I do paint studies, I also did dye studies, which is really going to take time.  Two of these are ones that I had to do anyway for my independent study.  I can rinse these at the end of Day 2.  Make decisions based on the colors at the beginning of Day 3.  Batch the first piece of fabric on Day 3 and rinse on Day 4.  If all goes well, batch second piece of fabric on Day 4 and rinse after day job on Day 5.