Feeling creative

I went out among the living. I did take a couple of naps during the week and that was only because of night time noises waking me up. It’s Kentucky Derby time which means the bar on the next street behind my house has plenty of activity going on. By Monday evening all the out of town party goers will be gone and things should get back to normal again.

I attended a community meeting about a business that opened illegally in a residential neighborhood house a couple blocks away. The house was not a business before. It was just a house in the middle of a block of family houses. The business was secretly opened back in September 2023 without any business license and without any zoning permits and without paying business taxes and especially without any input from the neighbors before opening. The business owner has intentions of doing the same thing in other residential houses throughout Shively.

My urge to create has been becoming stronger now that I’m not feeling so tired and weak all the time. Simply sitting and making drawings for future quilts wouldn’t work. I couldn’t be creatively idle any longer! I decided that cleaning and cooking and organizing and gardening can wait until another time because textile art and quilts are waiting to be born and loved. Also, all the raises in my bills has severely hurt my budget. My choice is to either go back to work so that I can pay the bills or risk losing things one by one. I still plan to make charity quilts along with the quilts for sale.

I opened some quilt videos on youtube for inspiration. Nope, there’s not enough creativity in watching someone else create although it did help. Not to mention I started worrying about creative overload. I might get too many new ideas in my head before finishing what’s already started. I need to begin with what I have first.

I pulled out one of the drawer bins under the quilting machine. It contains at least a couple hundred pre-made blocks given to me a few years ago. The blocks are called half square triangles. When these were first given to me my idea was to make an art type bed quilt to sell plus a couple of charity lap quilts for nursing home wheelchair patients. I can’t remember the design I had planned or where the quilts would go. It doesn’t matter now. I’ll find a new use for the scrap blocks.

Did I mention how I absolutely love the challenge of using other people’s leftover and/or throw away scrap fabrics to create my textile art and charity quilts? When someone gives me a bunch of orphan blocks or very odd shaped pieces of quilt fabric it’s like a challenge issued to me. I must find the art and beauty within and bring it out.

That activity worked! I began to feel my creative spirit again. It was a simple project of picking out the stray threads left by the previous maker and then trimming to make each square even. It felt so good to keep my hands busy as my mind wandered to a future quilt design using the blocks. That’s a lot of pieces! I kept thinking there had to be a faster way of trimming them to square.

While working I remembered a rotary cutting template I saw at the time when I was given the blocks and never bought it. Well maybe now was the time. I went to eBay and found what I needed at half the original cost. I splurged some of my garden budget to buy it. The cutting template will arrive on Tuesday. There are a few other items I’ll need to be artfully creative but those can wait until I’ve sold something to pay for them. It’s difficult keeping my mind on everyday living when it’s so occupied with creative thoughts. It’s like my mind is trying to make up for months of lost time. I’ll have to find a balance among all my activities while keeping enough time left for family.

I took an afternoon to watch a grandchild’s coach-ball game. He has several tournament rings and a couple of most valuable player awards. They are only plastic but very important to him. He wants to play baseball in high school or college someday. Or maybe even become a professional player. I sat enjoying the game while soaking up plenty of sunlight to improve my health.

I’m saying prayers for the people living in the Texas flood areas and the areas of recent tornados. The storms passing through those areas are expected here this week. My troubles seem so trivial compared with those who’ve lost everything. Please stay safe. Hugs from KY,

Anita