Orphan blocks are not like unfinished novels

It's a busy day, getting ready for guests that will enlighten our lives for the next week. However my feet are a little weary, so why not ramble here for a bit, giving those dogs a rest as well as set upon a discourse about the above title before I forget why I thought it was important (lol).

I don't even know why I first pondered this, maybe an IG poster mentioned them, which made me think of my orphan EPP blocks. I don't have many machine sewn blocks without a home, but plenty of English paper pieced designs linger in a tote, patterns I liked and HAD TO MAKE. I used plenty of them on a Turning Twenty quilt, decorating some plain tone-on-tone prints and that was a great manner in which to employ less than a quarter of what remains, ahem.

Oh and I used some on a t-shirt quilt that I made in conjunction with a friend, who had lived in Hawaii for a few years and wanted to put her aged shirts to quilty use. But still many remain, although I have a plan for them, hehehe. I am hoping to turn them into the upper blocks in a Wandering Wife quilt! Perhaps next year, if the planets align correctly.

From April 2020. Boy I made a lot of quilts that year.

Yet, what does all this have to do with how orphan blocks don't line up with writing. Well.... Orphan blocks can come to some good end, sewn with others to form a fascinating improv quilt or used as placemats or coasters or.... SOMETHING VIABLE. Something tangible. Something that doesn't sit in a flash drive, I mean tote, for the rest of its life, unlike an uncompleted novel that, well, sits in a flash drive and on a hard drive for the rest of its life.

If I felt like being generous, I could say something like this: "Well you know, just writing for the sake of practicing one's craft is enough. Not everything requires The End."

Which is true, okay, but I am all about finding a use for things. Small sewing, be it in mug rugs or EPP, can eventually be meshed into this or that item. But an unfinished manuscript, jeez, that makes me feel like.... It makes me cringe a little. Causes me to sigh heavily. Gives me pause for the work I put into not only the prose but the planning of the prose and all that time spent now lives in a dark virtual realm with no clear purpose.

Last year's NANO attempt is one such manuscript. I have another story that I began shortly after we moved to Humboldt County, and while it too isn't done, I possess more optimism for it than the NANO tale. Okay, so maybe it's last year's story that is really digging under my skin. I spent many afternoons writing character sketches, plot twists, timelines.... I corralled about twenty-five K, then bailed. Do I regret it? No. Well, I must regret some part of it because here I am, blah blah blahing about it. It's an orphan book that most likely won't find its way into a t-shirt quilt someday.

A mantra in the quilting world is that even projects or patterns that don't turn out the way the maker likes still have merit as a teaching tool, a way to further assess one's tastes, a manner of experimentation. I buy into that, because not everything I've made suits my taste, but other than a couple of futzy patterns, I have enjoyed just about all I have sewn. The t-shirt quilt was a little tricksy, but wow it's great looking. And I walked away from it fully aware I'd never make another, LOL! Yet that incomplete story.... Wow, that truly irritates me. And again, I can't put my finger on exactly why.

But I've described one way in which sewing isn't comparable with writing. For all their similarities, at least in my head, I can embrace orphan blocks, but not orphaned books. Now having spilled that heartache (and given my tootsies a break), I can move on with this day. Before guests arrive I have random cleaning to do, probably a cup of tea to sip, maybe some paper pieces to baste. And hopefully an incomplete story that I can now lay to rest, perhaps buried under adorable fabric scraps too small for even a one-inch hexie yet kept anyway merely for their beauty.