Quilty Goodness

I've really been wanting to get into quilting over the past few months. I'm particularly interested in art quilting and mixed media textile art, but I have learned through many failed crafty endeavours that it is important to start small, with the basics. My personal creative philosophy, spanning anything from knitting to cooking to writing, is that every creative project should include one or two new techniques. Whether they are tiny steps toward something new, or great big scary deep-end jumps into the unknown, learning opportunities should be present in every project. Unless I push myself to do something new with each project, I have a lazy tendency to stagnate. It's easy to stick with the same old skill set, never moving forward or growing, and I do love my easy. However, I decided jumping right into the unbelievably lush and inspiring world of art quilting and textile art would be a foolish idea. Ok, more than foolish - damn stupid. I don't want to get discouraged, and I don't want to waste a bunch of money on a finished project that I hate. Art is a journey, but you still have to live with the destination. I didn't want it to be a journey of broken needles, the oily smell of overheating sewing machine, and steadily streaming profanity. I really didn't want the destination to be a purposeless hundred dollar mess of lumpy, thread covered fabric that used to be pretty before I effed it up.

So what I was trying to say before I went off on an ego driven my-personal-philosophy-on-life-art-and-every-other-thing tangent was this: I want to take up quilting but I wanted my first project to be small and simple. My dear friend M just had the most adorable baby boy and so I made him a crib quilt. I'm really proud of the final product. I don't have any pictures of the full thing, because I hoped to post something about it before I gave it away without her knowing and, surprise surprise, never did. It's just a printed panel of fabric, some fusible batting (didn't like that very much - it wasn't very fuse-y and lost a lot of volume being ironed), and bias tape, but I'm really proud of it.

X is for X ray! Cute cute cute. I'm really happy. I loved making this project and I can't wait to make more quilty goodness in the future.