The games I play...

I love quilting.   Quilting allows me the means to express my creativity.  It gives me a chance to open my mind to all the possibilities with shapes, colour choices and design options.  Quilting helps me feel calm and relaxed and gives me patience to deal with things in my life.  It takes me outside of myself, into another world where all the small stuff just doesn't matter.  My family understands this and respects my need to quilt.

There are times in life that things are off beat and one doesn't know how to move forward.  I get that way sometimes in my quilting too.  In life you take one step at a time.  In the end things will change, stay the same, fix themselves or just not matter anymore.  In quilting it can be the same.  Having difficulty with a design, just put it aside and let your brain sort it out.  Maybe that is one of the reasons I have 23 different projects, but another reason is because some are at different stages of completion. Some of my projects are handwork, some need quilting, while some are leader/enders and others may be stuck on a design feature.

Unlike life, when I just don't know where to start or what to do next, I reach for my jars.  When I have little inspiration or am stuck on a particular creative step in my work, I change gears.  I will pull a tab out of one of my jars above.  The first jar, the UFO jar has tabs of all my 23 projects I am working on.  The second jar is "The quilt want to be..." jar.  This one has tabs of quilts I want to do in my life time.  The third jar is for when I don't think I can handle a whole quilt and need something a bit easier.  This jar has tabs listing blocks from The Farmer's Wife book.

Yes, I know a silly game, but sometimes you just need a little guidance or direction to help get over a road block and to get the creative juices running again.  Wish it were that simple in life.