Boy... i知 thinking you all have been running around in my head! 😊 i agree with all of this, but sometimes we can lose track of why we really quilt. For me i just plain love it and even if it isnt exactly going as planned, its still mine on my schedule and it makes me happy (even if my results arent exactly as i expected).
Most of us go to work every day (or used to) and we have had enough of stress and deadlines, etc. We quilt because we want to and it feeds our soul.
Have i entered something in a competition? Yes, i have and i got my first and only blue ribbon. But never again for me cuz its just too stressful! I知 in heaven with a bunch of seemingly unrelated scraps making charity quilts from start to finish. I have a number of my own quilt tops waiting to be finished but i知 not making a list. They will get done when it moves me. Period.
I bought a sitdown longarm last year but i dont quilt for others ( with the exception of charity quilts). I am so happy not to have to cram those quilts into that comparatively tiny space on my domestic sewing machine anymore! But i知 not pushing my learning process at this point - rather i learn on a need to know basis and be happy with that! Hoping by the time i retire in a few years that my skills will have progressed more, but if they dont i値l work on them at that time! I just wanna sit in my Happy Place and just putz along... and i致e finally gotten old enough to realize that isnt such a bad thing to aspire to!
Thanks everybody... happy to know im not alone!