One of Everything, Please.

I've been quilting for 21 years now and I still don't know what kind of quilter I am. I can't even answer the most basic questions, like: what kind of quilts do you make? What colors do you tend to use? Do you hand quilt or machine quilt? Hand piece or machine piece? And so on.

The truth is, I do it all. I do bright colors because I live in Hawaii and I sort of HAVE to--I'm not all that sure I like bright colors, but I don't dislike them either. I lean toward pastels, but I do get tired of them and long for splashes of jewel tones or two-color quilts. I do lots of things by hand, but I do lots of things by machine, too. It seems like I've done one of everything.

I pieced the Mariner's Compass above in the mid-nineties sometime. I've never liked the colors all that much, and it looks a little dated now, but it's still pretty impressive, no? But I look at that piece and think, "I did that? I designed and drafted and executed those teensy-weensy points all from my pencil drawing on freezer paper? Whew. Glad I won't have to do that again!"

I guess I'm at a phase where I'm appreciating more simple quilts. I'm not out to prove anything to anyone. (I obviously wanted to impress someone with that Mariner's Compass above--I think it was our local quilt shop owner. I wanted her to let me teach, so I tried to show her how masochistic I was. I got the job.) I love simple...and I love scrappy. Right now, I'm working on this:

This is a simple "strippy" quilt made from my stash. I threw some vintage scraps in here just for fun: an old apron, a little girl's nightgown, some UFO's from my remnant bin. I love this thing. I made it from this great tutorial on the web: happythings

No complicated piecing for me right now. I just want to sit and sew scraps together for a while and enjoy my life. Perhaps in a few weeks, I'll be feeling ambitious again and want to tackle a piecing challenge. I've been wanting to make another one of these:

Lousy picture, sorry, but it's a cute quilt, huh? My friend Jo Anne and I designed and made this quilt for our friend Paige. The curved piecing was fun and yet the quilt is pretty simple overall. I'd like to try it again in old fabrics...I've got a red and turquoise urge coming on.

Isn't this great about quilting? There's always a "next one" plan in the works. I better live a loooooong time.