Yes, sometimes I just don’t want to do anything that I’ve already started (even if I just started it 2 hours ago). When that happens, rather than starting an official project, I grab some fabric and PLay. I might just sit and stitch some of my machine’s decorative stitches on a scrap of fabric and batting, or I might FMQ “scribbles” all over some scrap fabric sandwiches. I might look in a book or on-line to find a technique that I’ve never tried before and play with it... the point is to PLAY. Playing with my fabrics, threads, machines, fabric paints, etc. without having any purpose in mind often helps me learn new techniques that later on get incorporated into projects. I find that letting loose and just playing also helps me recharge when I’m not feeling creative. A bonus is that sometimes the scraps I’m playing with turn out to be nice art pieces, other times they end up being samples that I can refer back to.
When I’m playing I ask myself “what if” questions like “what would happen if I tried to combine these two decorative stitches”. or “what if I did some quilting on some fabric and then painted it with fabric paints or with my inktense pencils.
you might want to check out the National quilter’s circle— specifically the techniques taught by Heather Thomas, even if you don’t like her very non-traditional approach to quilt making, you may find that there are some techniques you would enjoy trying that could be incorporated into your quiltmaking practice. Another thing you may want to try is doing some pattern free quiltmaking— Joe Cunningham teaches a good introduction on Craftsy (called Pattern Free Quiltmaking) with some tricks to help you set some boundaries or rules to help guide your exploration into pattern free quilt making. It’s a good class for folks who are used to using patterns but want to get their feet wet doing some improvisational quilting.
Rob
Last edited by rryder; 10-24-2017 at 12:23 PM.