Kreative Blogger Award

A couple of weeks ago, Christine kindly honored me with a Kreative Blogger Award. As Christine said, we both have a love of books and our respective crafts (cross stitch in Christine's case). I'm flattered by the award, and in the "Kreative" spirit, I thought I'd share 6 things I've learned about creativity through my quilting:

1. You don't have to finish everything you start. (This applies to books as well as quilts.) Some things just don't "work" but they can be instruments of learning. The colors may be off, the balance of shapes may be wrong, or it's just plain boring. Life is too short to waste on projects (or books) that are no longer interesting. Stop and go work on (or read) something that IS interesting.

2. Step back and take a long view once in awhile. Colors look very different together from afar than they do up close. It's the impact they have from a distance that you want to focus on.

3. Use more red, yellow, and orange. These are "warm" colors and it doesn't take more than just a few scraps of them to perk something up and totally change the look. As much as I love blue and green, I need to spice things up more often.

4. Do it right. Even if that means doing it over again. Yeah, it's frustrating, but I'm so much happier with myself when I do it right. I'm just enough of a perfectionist that doing it right matters. Basically, I know who I am.

5. Don't be afraid to learn new techniques (or read a different genre). They say brain exercise will stave off dementia. Trying something new means it might take a little longer, but the result is extremely satisfying.

6. Practice, practice, practice. The stuff I make now is much better than the stuff I used to make. I love seeing how far I've come, especially with my machine quilting.

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