Facing Fear
I spent the week facing fear. It started when I went to the Project Quilting site to learn what the final 2023 prompt would be. You guessed it – fear. This is not something new to me. I face fear frequently. Not paralyzing fear, but definitely fear that I might prefer to avoid or am forced to push through. Maturing, a word I prefer over aging, is a fear I confront frequently as I cope with my changing energy, declining memory and deteriorating eyesight. No, I am not nearly as decrepit as that makes me sound. However, with my 70th birthday only weeks away the changes in my body compared to my 20th birthday are dramatic.
Acceptance
One way I cope with fear is to pare down to the essentials. There are only so many hours in a day and I only have so much energy, so I cut back. This week it meant putting aside my work on In the Beginning. Yes, to make that decision I had to face the fear of not making the entry deadline. That was easy. I am substantially ahead of schedule. Instead I focused exclusively on my Project Quilting 14.6 piece.
Project Quilting
The actual prompt for Project Quilting 14.6 is “Conquer a Fear”. Yikes! The thought is that the subject matter of the piece could reflect a fear OR you could choose to tackle something in the making of your piece because it scares you. Since there is only one week between announcing the prompt and posting my finished piece one fear to conquer is simply to stop dithering and start a piece not knowing whether I could do it. The fear I opted to face, don’t laugh, is needle turn appliqué. I have tried, tried and tried again to do needle turn appliqué. I so admire those who can do it. Invariably I think “forget it” and when appliqué is required I use any other technique but needle turn.
So… it occurred to me that my problem is because I am left handed and everyone who has tried to teach me or what I have seen illustrated or demoed is done right handed. I Googled “needle turn appliqué for left handers”. Eureka! Another left hander had a YouTube video on the topic. I watched it. I faced my fear and miraculously it was as though I had been doing needle turn appliqué for years. All the larger pieces of the cat were done this way. I’m not done yet, but I am fairly certain I will finish the quilt in time to link to Project Quilting this Sunday.
Rainbow Scrap Challenge
Because I focused on Project Quilting this week, I didn’t make any more green stem blocks for March. I am OK with that. I can return to my stems next week.
I’m linking up to the following posts:
