Quilt out of my box with 'The Quilt Show' Challenge - Episode #105

Creativity- that can be really tough sometimes and that is what I have been facing with this challenge. While getting myself ready for this I thought really hard about what I wanted out of this challenge. The most important thing was to just try something that would be a challenge and out of my comfort zone. Barbara Olson  on 'The Quilt Show' Episode 105 was very inspiring. Her flowers are vibrant and alive! Big prints and big color and not things I even have in my stash! So I went hunting in my fabrics and found this bright, striped 1-1/2 yard piece that I have no idea why I even bought...it must of been a crazy moment. So I thought maybe I could do a flower just from this... it is full of color. 

The next step was to draw my own flower. After many sketches I settled on this one and enlarged it a bit.

So far so good! Then I started looking at that fabric and wondered what I was even thinking! But this is a challenge...so next was grain lines and then I decided to fuse everything and use thread to enhance it all a bit. 

Before I show the finished flower I  must say that this was challenging. I really, really like my comfortable box! And my life is quite stressful right now so it is hard to let that go to create and I am not sure I managed that at all but I tried. Most importantly during this process I was not liking this at all but I kept going and kept an open mind and in the end I am mostly happy. So I learned to keep going and maybe something great will be there in the end or maybe not. Or maybe it won't be great in your eyes but wonderful in someone else's. And I also learned that there are many ways to be creative. There is no right way- you just need to dive in and keep an open  mind. Not easy sometimes.

So here is the finished piece- not quilted and I am not planning to.

 

And I know what I am doing with all the leftovers... a pineapple quilt!

The next episode (#106 with Denise Labadie) I will be skipping because there is no where local and easy to pick up the supplies I would need but someday I will probably come back to this one because it looks like fun.

So the next challenge is 'The Quilt Show' Episode 107. 

Happy Stitching everyone!