Week 6 Check-In 12/11/05

This quilt is called Bohemian Rhapsody by Ricky Tims, and Rhapsody quilts are his newest passion. He feels like they will be the Baltimore Album quilts of this age. I have to say that I find them much more appealing than Baltimore Album quilts, now whether I will ever actually do a Rhapsody quilt remains to be seen. He did share a lot of techniques for making them and feels like each and every quilter should make at least one quilt of this caliber in their quilting lifetime -- whether Rhapsody, Baltimore Album or whatever, something that truly stretches your imagination and limitations. While I can appreciate the amount of work that goes into a Baltimore Album quilt when I see one, I personally do not find them particularly pretty -- I do think this quilt is beautiful -- and intimidating!! The fact that it is machine done, rather than hand applique might give me a small amount of hope however. But I think I need a better machine if I were to attempt it, as I don't think any of my machines do the appropriate stitches for the machine applique. Bernina was one of the sponsors of the Ricky Tims Quilt Seminar that I attended for the last two days, and I did not succumb to letting my artist child have a new - or even newer - Bernina (I have an 830), I did succumb to plenty of other little treasures for her from the Ricky Tims' store, so artist child can't do much complaining that she was deprived this week!

Now for my Week 6 Check-In: As I said before, I really enjoyed Chapter 6 - the reading of it. I had a crazy week with two early morning dentist appointments, two days where I had to arrive early to work as a volunteer at the quilt seminar, and a couple of mornings where I had numerous errands to do on my way to work. I managed artist's page 4 mornings out of 7, but they were somewhat more abbreviated than usual. Since we're taking a break until after the first of the year to begin Chapter 7, I plan to spend at least next week continuing to work on Chapter 6, doing the exercises, etc. I can't say that my morning pages this week did much exploring of creative luxury for myself - like I said I was preoccupied most of the week with other tasks, even when I did morning pages. But it is a concept I want to think about more -- part of me says though that I used to use my early morning time to do a little sewing before I left for work - time which I am now giving to Artist Way instead. Admittedly, those morning sewing sessions were usually something rote, like piecing string-pieced blocks - maybe that was my own version of morning pages actually, because the work was nothing that required me to concentrate too hard in the creation of it, so I was able to do a lot of thinking while I sewed, just didn't write any of the thoughts down on paper. Sort of like folding sheets for Hilda! On the other hand I did indulge in a fair amount of luxury from the vendors at the seminar when it came to indulging my artist child . I pulled 5 postcards out this morning to send to friends, and will try to get those written and mailed by tomorrow. A lot of the techniques that Ricky talked about in the seminar are really playing around in my head and I want to try some of them out -- perhaps some of those will be explored in the journal quilt challenge next year. Once I finish here, I'm going to take a shower and head out for the Pueblo Grande Indian Market - my second artist date for this week. Since this Market is outdoors, I'm planning to look around for natural abundance while I'm there as well as enjoying the art that is available -- the 5 rocks and 5 leaves or flowers exercises, since I haven't had a chance to do those yet. It isn't often that I have ideas for 2 artist dates in a week of quite this caliber - I'll probably be back to trips to GoodWill before long - but I'm going to try to be more innovative. I'm really jazzed this morning anyway from my first artist date of the week, and I'd like to keep that feeling flowing more often in my life!