You asked about my process

I cannot tell you how many times I started a post titled "I never took the Process Pledge"  If this sounds ridiculous, in my defense people keep sending me the link to the Process Pledge.  & I admit I love reading the Process Pledge entries on other blogs.  My problem is that my process is, well, not really a process.

Let me start again (& here we have the first window into the process problem).  I mean really, let me start again, as I actually got as far as Step 1 in an old post.  & those blocks remain more or less as described, except they are no on a shelf instead f the work table itself.  They still fall over & then I pick them up & spread them around.  Sometimes I pin them to my t-shirt & admire them in the mirror, not because that way I can see more of them.  I really like them (& thank you again if you sent me your blocks, I know I should feel guilty about not making them into a quilt like a "good" winner would do but I don't.  So there.

Wait, I think I might have revealed another step in there:

Step 2- Look at the blocks in the mirror.   I do this ALL THE TIME.  & yes I often pin things to myself because I only have the two hands.  & I like to see as much all jumbled up as I can (how is that for a sentence!).  I find it very easy to ignore my own head.  Hmmm, let's move on.

So I ignore my own head & look at the blocks or the panel or the quilt top that could be done but doesn't feel done.  I have been told, not specifically but by people who talk about the wonder of design walls that they are the only way to go.  They don't work for me.  As it happens, quilting aside, my house does not have much in the way of walls.  The floor plan is not so much open as sort of cubby-holed, small rooms lead to small rooms.  We have a lot of big windows & long narrow horizontal windows & even some windows from one room to another.  Most of the internal walls are broken by doors, or at least doorways. 

What I am getting at is that I like to see the quilt-in-process the way it will be seen in real life.  While I do have a quilt hanging on my kitchen/dining room wall, most quilts will be folded or wrapped around a person or rumpled on a bed & I just don't have the eyes that can translate some flat thing into a folded, wrinkled thing.  I admire people who do, I wonder how they learned it or maybe they were born with it...?  I don't know, that is someone else's process, not mine.  For the record, that quilt hanging in my dining room was intended for a bed or a couch & I think it kind of shows.

& something just fell in place!  Any quilt I ever designed has no central point of reference.  None of them.  Nada.  They don't even have off-center points of reference.  Apparently I work in the round. 

This is not true, of course.  I have certainly made quilts with a central focus (you can see a couple  here & here), but it isn't usual or even my preference.  So I think I will stick with most of the time my whole deal, design, execution everything in-between, before & after is fragmented.  I don't believe most of my quilts spend even a small amount of time in flat full view & I don't use that perspective when planning them.

I guess that is about it.  There is probably more to it, I will probably write about it but unsurprisingly my blogging process is like my quilting process, fragmented.  The only reason I even revisited this theme is the Block Lotto Weekend Update:

The Second Saturday Topic for Weekend Update for May 10-13  is an open-ended invitation to Share Your Process:  How do you do what you do?  Share your process for choosing fabrics, designing quilts, designing borders, adapting patterns to make them your own, using a design wall/floor/other surface, paper piecing, appliqué (hand or machine) … or any other quilting process you’d like to share.

Don't come around here no more OR Step One

I fell in like-a-lot with the July Block Lotto block as soon as I saw it.   I am a fan of off-kilter graphic designs & I knew right away it had real potential in combo with large scale novelties (I am on an eternal quest for not-so-obvious places to insert smaller pieces of a large scale print).  Yes, I know, not everyone looks at 10" 16-patches & says "needs something big & confusing, pattern-wise", but there you are.

First let me show you one of the sets I made.  Alice in Wonderland just as she meets the Cheshire Cat, right?  Hence the title of this post (you are actually most welcome to come around as often as you like, cyberly anyway).

& then on July 31st I learned I won! 48 of these puppies will be working their way to me (I kept none of the blocks I posted because I had made a few back-ups for a not-yet-determined project; I really enjoyed MAKING this block).  That same week another quilt-blogger of my digital acquaintance asked how it was that I never took the process pledge.  The answer is mostly I never thought of it.  Also my process is not exactly linear; very few things come to me even in a roundabout way.  Mostly I stare at blank walls until it just seems like it has always been that way. You read that right - I do not have a design wall.  & brace yourselves, quilters...I could have a design wall; I choose not to.  I have a hard enough time staying interested in a project that is draped across my sewing table & even then, once I am finished I am very likely to send it elsewhere, so sick am I of thinking about it.  If I actually had to look at the d*mn thing, on the wall I just might stop quilting all together.  Have I ever mentioned deadlines make me tense?  Well they do & a design wall is a giant looming deadline as far as I am concerned. 

So here it is:

Step One- try not to think too hard about the quilt design.  This is best accomplished by never looking at the potential components directly or as a whole.  I'm really not kidding.  Instead heap everything together, ideally on a surface not quite large enough so that it periodically falls over & everything gets reshuffled & jumbled.