The Joy and Discipline of Making a Quilt - Lilly Pilly Quilt

Blobby blocks is something I've discovered isn't really my thing. I like my hexie flowers to be scrappy, my 6 and 8 point stars to be scrappy. I want to SEE the individual shapes that make up my scrappy EPP blocks! So when I finished up my Lilly Pilly quilt, I immediately added a more scrappy version to the list. I couldn't just dive in, though. I needed to think it through. So many of my scrappy quilts are just random prints thrown together, and the joining shapes border the stars or the flowers to give the blocks contrast and shape. But in Lilly Pilly, the blocks touch each other so if I just used random colours, you would only see a mess of jewels, and not the flowers they make. 

Last year, while talking with my mum about what quilt she'd like to make next, I got the sudden realisation (why didn't I come up with this earlier, it's so obvious?!) that I could stitch the Lilly Pilly flowers in scrappy petals that were all the same colour. Sometimes a really simple idea is just waiting for the right time to execute it! I asked mum if she wanted to make it and she agreed. 

We went through my scrap tubs, cutting one or two jewels from almost every print until we had enough shapes, then we basted them and separated them into zip lock bags according to colour. This step we did without being too fussy. There were only a few browns so we threw them in with yellow and gold. Some jewels that were very close in colour ended up in both the teal pile and the blue pile. I told mum not to worry at all about matching up colours because my goal was to see the jewels. She decided to work on one colour at a time, and then if there were any left, she would add those to the next colour in the spectrum. 

Mum took my scrappy stitching advice and stitched all the jewels in one colour bag into half flowers first, until she'd stitched up as many as she could into an even number of half flowers. This helps spread out both favourite, easy to use prints, and tricky prints. Then she stitched all the half flowers into full flowers, and moved onto the next bag!

Because they were so fun and low pressure, mum stitched these up in no time flat, and then they came back to me for the next round of decisions about background fabrics. I also like to use this 'mid-point' in a quilt to check for colour balance, and if, when I spread them out, if any stand out as too clashy, or flat.

That was a few months ago. I finally opened it up this week as part of my efforts to give all of my WIPs some attention. And in those efforts, I'm discovering that most of my WIPs sit in my cupboard at a similar 'mid-point', ready for effort and decision making and a little time. And because effort and decision making and time feel in short supply most days, I usually find it easier to start something new, spurred by the tailwind of new-quilt energy, than to go back to an old project and give it attention. 

My job today was attention. I counted the blocks, laid them out by colour, thought about spread and balance. Mum had stitched all 105 flowers needed for the quilt, but I realised there wasn't much coral in the mix. I decided to take some of hers out and add some coral flowers in. 

My next job is to prepare over 600 little diamonds! Saying that number 'out loud' makes me realise that's not just an afternoon job for today, but will take me a while. These realisations seem to happen to me often, and always take me a little off guard. In my efforts to go through each WIP and make a little progress, I've had in mind that I'd get the next step done in an afternoon or so, and then move onto something else. And with each WIP, I've been faced by the enormity of the task. I don't need an afternoon to put this, and other WIPs, back into "Easy Progress Mode". I need a week! Time to take a deep breath, realign my expectations with reality, and then decide if that's how I want to spend my stitching time this week.

To keep me from packing it away immediately, I took 6 little diamonds from my Honeydew quilt in progress and stitched them into a lovely green block. I needed to remind myself of the lovely thing I was making. That it wasn't all effort and obstacle. That I loved the colours, and the clever way the jewels and diamonds went together to make a hexagon, that I wanted to keep going and see what this quilt looks like, all finished and scrappy and delicious.

It's got me thinking a lot about the way I interact with my quilt WIPs. I have completely embraced the joy and freedom of starting new quilts before others have been finished. It helps me always have stitching to do that I'm enjoying, helps keep my hands busy and my mind calm in down-times, allows me to explore new ideas when they spark rather than adding them to a list that's so long, by the time I got to it, the spark would have moved on. 

But now I'm in a season where I can feel the need for a little discipline, a little more order. It doesn't bring the same spark or happy rush that starting something new does, or that comes from working with my natural flow of motivation. It's more like the effort of putting on my shoes and going for a walk even though the temperature is miserable, because I know I will feel good afterwards. Or the satisfaction of giving the kitchen a good clean, for the ease of using it afterwards. 

And you know that feeling when you finally do the thing you always put off? Usually, (unless it's something like cleaning the oven!;P) the experience is marked with surprise that it's not so bad afterall, with gladness that you're getting the thing done. It's a different kind of joy to eating cake or turning on the TV when you're in the middle of a really good series. It takes more effort, is driven by self control and delayed gratification rather than a natural, easy pull, but still I'm noticing, that in opening up my WIP boxes, and giving my quilts time and attention, I'm actually rekindling the motivation and joy I used to feel for this quilt. And it feels better than closing it back up again, and starting something new.

My Works in Progress so often stall on the first big obstacle that crops up after my motivation has started to wane or my interest has moved on to something else. Can you relate? At this point I usually put it away to wait for another burst of motivation later, and sometimes these bursts come, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes it's my job to tend to motivation, to stoke it, to brush away the cobwebs, tidy things up, and remember that first love. It feels a little funny to talk about effort and discipline for something that's a hobby, that's there for fun and diversion. But I wonder if there isn't actually real love, real fun, real diversion without effort and discipline. And in my experience, the quilts I finished that took some extra effort to get across the line, always seem to become my favourite.

Lilly Pilly is a wonderful scrappy quilt from my Hexie Handbook, an e-book complete with 15 different hexagon designs and the quilts they make. Grab your copy, and the Lilly Pilly paper pieces, below!