Creating for a free-motion workshop

I don’t recall ever offering to help anyone or advertising that I will teach free-motion quilting but somehow it just happened.  I think the fact that I love this part of the quilting process the most must have played a role and now I am in it for better or for worse.  Luckily mostly for better as most of the students eventually see this is after all not brain surgery and just a matter of practice, practice and more practice.

With 2011 not even done and dusted I was again asked when my first workshop in 2012 would be.  So I knew I had to do something but what?  Not having a single artistic bone in my body I had to find something new, fresh and my own to serve as useful end result and also give a beginner enough exercise.  I am so over making and joining squares or dividing a large piece of fabric into squares.  Surely there must be something more pleasing to the eye?

Then one sleepless night while channel hopping on TV I saw this quick flash on Cartoon Network and I think it represented an explosion.   As with anything animated it was funky, alive and extremely colorful and I there and then knew….. THAT would be the next free-motion workshop or then something similar.

I couldn’t start working on it right away as I was busy with the projects for our goody bags for the 2013 National Festival and didn’t want to stop midway during my monthly target, so I had to let it slide. Done with one months’ target and with hubby playing golf early one Saturday morning I could give it a try.  Now obviously by then I only remembered a thought bubble, stars and plenty of curly shapes but for once my bad memory had an advantage as now I am not copying anyone else’s idea.  It was just much cheaper to first create with paper to see what it would look like and if, in fact, it could work.  So I did just that.

Now at this stage I was so chuffed with my art attempt that I stopped just there and actually felt that I accomplished something or then at least made a start.