Beauty's Where You Find It

And so is zen. I tried cross stitch. It drove me crazy to keep having to look back at the chart.

Then I found quilting. I quickly became a Trudie Hughes groupie. It was sooo relaxing to cut some strips, then just mindlessly sew sew sew. And I ended up with something permanent and useful!

My first completed quilt,circa 1987, from Trudie Hughes' now out of print More Template Free Quiltmaking.

The zen was in the piecing. I loved piecing! And sometimes still do. But once I became a proficient machine quilter, the zen was in the quilting.

Detail, Kaleiding Stars, 1999 Piecing still an almost zenlike experience, but quilting more so

Back in the 90's I started entering quilt shows and exhibitions, and my perfectionist tendencies took over. I started pressuring myself to make every quilt the very best it could be (at least technically). That can be a good thing. But it also meant that quilting was not the escape that it had been. I still love it, but in a different way. I sort of have to psyche myself up to get started, but once I do I love it again.

Last year I found a new to me way to relax, and that was knitting. I had never considered it before. Maybe I started because folks on the Quiltart list were mentioning it. At any rate, it is my new escape. I feel productive and relaxed when I can take 10 minutes of waiting time, otherwise wasted, and turn it into fabric. How cool is that?

Green garter stitch scarf, probably the 4th thing I knitted