I am a writer; however, that is not my only creative pursuit. I knit, I crochet, I bake and cook, I quilt, I garden. I've even been known to dabble in origami, although my husband is much more serious about it.
One of the hardest things in any creative pursuit is deciding upon a style. With writing, my starting point -- genre -- was defined by my reading. With crochet and knitting, I focused on afghans because that's what my mom crochets. Teaching myself to knit and branching out into sweaters and other clothes were the result of me looking for more challenges, something to set myself apart. How I work depends on how I got started.
That has made quilting an interesting pursuit for me. I did not grow up around anyone who quilted. There are no quilt shops nearby where I can go for casual interaction or to join a circle. My knowledge of quilts was based on half-remembered plots from a Trixie Belden mystery, a vague notion that patchwork was mentioned in the Little House on the Prairie books, some discussion in the McCall needlecraft book I taught myself to knit from, and Earlene Fowler's mysteries. Which means I had some notion that appliqué existed as a style, but mostly I knew about pieced blocks and crazy quilts.
Thus, my starting point. I made a nine-patch crib quilt for my son when he was three (and using the crib mattress in a toddler bed), then started a modified pinwheel bed quilt for my niece, which I finished piecing and quilting a handful of years later. Meanwhile, I acquired a fabric stash, waiting for me to decide what to create with all my treasures. I pulled out the fabric recently and tried to decide what to make, where to start.
But because my friend Kelly (
Redheaded Quilter and
Quilting Examiner) quilts, and I've seen pictures of some of her work, and because I've discovered the
American Quilter's Society, now I'm beginning to see just how wide the range of choices is. Geometric, cutwork, folded, patchwork, paper-pierced, appliqué, sashiko, samplers and art quilts that include more than one style, bargello, miniatures, pictorial, trapunto. Cottons, flannels, batiks, hand-dyed, painted, pencils, beads, yo-yos and ruching and other dimenional effects, silks, brocades, and evidently love letters. It's sort of like writing -- if I'd only ever seen one type of story and was suddenly introduced to a library and told I could pick anywhere to start.
Being me, of course, that means I've embarked on multiple projects, each a different style. There's the hand-appliquéd Celtic knot (not nearly
this fancy, but isn't that gorgeous?) with a folded patchwork border. There's the one with blocks based off the
bright hopes pattern, but with three stripes where each of the rectangles is. There's the ideas I'm toying with for the bright green and purple fabrics, which revolve around the
Lone Star quilt pattern, but are definitely influenced by the
"Stardust Memories" quilt that placed at an AQS show. And there's the
mystery quilt that I'll be working on through the winter, as AQS doles out the clues. (
This is the fabric I plan to use for the focus blocks on that mystery quilt.)
Where am I moving from my starting point? A bit of all-over-the-place. Given how eclectic I am in my reading (pretty much most genres and subgenres) and the number of pursuits I have, I suppose that makes sense. Maybe I'll settle down to my own style (my own quilting "voice") after I've done a dozen or two and have had a chance to experiment.
I guess that's another thing all the creative pursuits have in common. We make them our own by practicing them. What pursuits do you have, and how have you found your niche?
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