This Quilt vs. Those Quilts

It's been three years since I took a quilting class that us Smucker ladies took together, a gift from Paul's sister Lois.

We were given a packet of papers at the beginning, each paper featuring a different quilt block and a new rotary-cut-and-sew technique. The idea was to work your way through all these papers and end up with enough blocks for a quilt.

I had grand ideas of making two twin bed quilts, for Ben and Steven. I plowed through the class, week after week, enjoying it but certainly breaking new mental ground with each lesson.

And when the class ended I had good intentions and enough blocks for about 2/3 of one quilt.

This is embarrassing, but those quilts still aren't done.

I do this sometimes when I learn a new skill: I hit a wall that I can't seem to surmount. Like in high school I started taking a typing class and immediately everything went wrong. I was uncoordinated, Mrs. Nelson, whom I uncharitably compared to an old hen, intimidated me as she shrieked, "A S D F! J K L Sem!", and then my electric typewriter quit and I got way behind everyone else, and they were clicking rapidly on to "R U V N!" while my fingers still had no clue about A S D F, and after about three days I dropped the class. I would never learn to type. I didn't have it in me. It was impossible.

And of course my sister Rebecca was as good at typing as she was at everything else, which I resented, but it wasn't her fault.

I took an advanced English class instead.

This worked fine until I started college some four years later and discovered that all my papers had to be typed. I was doomed.

So I fearfully signed up for a typing class. The teacher turned out to be young and encouraging, and she let each of us learn at our own pace. No terrifying A S D F shouted to bumbling fingers. So, tentatively and slowly I began to learn to type.

And little by little, finger stroke by finger stroke, unbelievably, I learned to do something I was sure I could never do.

I hit a similar wall with those quilts. Now and then I'd pull out my stash of pattern papers and fat quarters and try again, but somehow I could never make headways and it would all go back to a bin in the sewing room.

This year Aunt Susie is head of the church sewing circle and I'm her assistant. We've been on a campaign to use up the phenomenal stash of fabric scraps at church. I brought one box home to sort through it and found leftovers from someone's quilt, pretty coordinated fabrics in black and kind of a rusty rose color that I don't know the name of.

Well, we need a few nice comforter tops that aren't a mishmash of uncoordinated pieces, so I found two big pieces in my personal stash that matched the pieces I found, and then at our ladies' retreat at the coast I cut a bunch of 8-inch squares.

But I wanted more than just squares stacked up like concrete blocks--something simple but just a bit artsier.

I found an easy and clever block called Disappearing Nine-Patch. You sew a nine-patch, whack it in half down and across, then rearrange the resulting four blocks.

See?
It took only a day or so to make the blocks. I would snatch five or ten minutes here and there and before I knew it, there were enough blocks for a quilt.

I spread the blocks over our bed and in what felt like a short time of grabbed minutes I had the blocks sewed together.

Here it is:

So. Why on earth can I do this quilt in such short order and the boys' quilts look so impossible to me?

I spent too much time thinking about this and decided the answer is right there: if I have to think about it too much, I won't get it done. I have to learn a totally new skill with each block, so I get it out, study the directions, pick out fabrics, study some more, make a few cuts--and then I have to go put the laundry in the dryer or answer the phone or make supper, and when I come back to it I've forgotten everything and have to start all over. No wonder it never gets done.

Whereas the easy quilt for sewing circle could be done automatically, without thinking.

So, maybe I need to forget the 15-different-blocks scheme and find one block that I can do over and over, till it's automatic, and finish those everlasting quilts that way. Maybe I could really make it easy and do a Disappearing Nine-patch.

Or, is there some way to break those complicated patterns into small steps like learning to type one letter at a time?

I just know I'm most likely to get it done if I learn to do it without thinking.

Quote of the Day:
Girl in Sunday school: "I dreamed I was being chased by the Philistines."
Boy in Sunday school: "That'd be awesome!"