Inadvertantly finding the path

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Our western view a couple of evenings ago.

A month ago I started taking an online course on how to sew angles. I knew that I wasn't going to just dive right into this new element of stitching, filing away each course after a quick read-through of that week's topic. Quickly I realized this course would be something I'd give proper consideration to much further ahead, perhaps early in 2024, what with the end of 2023 zipping right along as though each day signified the end of the world as we know it.

I mean, here it is, the fourth of October! Where have the last nine months gone, truly I ask, without delving into the deeper query of what about the last five years, eight years, two freaking decades??? Ahem, okay, calm down Present Me, and focus on the post at hand.

Today's post is about accepting how suddenly, a mere month into this course about angles, I really have no aching desire to sew triangles or diamonds or parallelograms unless they are English paper pieced. I don't currently have time to measure so precisely or align seams so accurately or cut fabric in a manner that requires lots of shifts of rulers. Two months ago, when I signed up for this course, I assumed that yeah, my fear of triangles needed an overhaul and what better way to remedy that but to take a class designed to educate myself right out of that terror. Well, not terror, but I'll admit to a significant wariness when it comes to trying to align correctly fabrics on the diagonal. And now I find the anguish has slipped away, replaced by, "Huh. yeah, I could do all these fidgeting things and produce beautifully angled quilts, but I'd rather just sew right angles or baste paper pieces and...."

And yeah, huh. Fascinating. What I mean is I had no idea I even wanted to quilt until spending an hour in a chain fabric store with my eldest nine and a half years ago, walking out of said establishment with an armload of fat quarters and heaps of quilting blogs waiting in my inbox. Life throws a curve while planned activities fall away, revealing inner desires previously unrealized or long-held dreams suddenly thrust into the spotlight. Quilting and writing have become my strongholds, yet they have evolved in manners unexpected. I love crafting intricate sagas, plenty of angles within the prose, while the sewing is more straightforward, lol. Perhaps these angle classes will be something I share with the grandkids one day; together we'll learn how to make adorable machine-pieced triangle quilts. Or maybe next year I'll find myself utterly bored with squares, who knows? At the beginning of this year I had no idea what I would next write, last November's failure dogging my literary steps. Yet twelve months on from that dismal attempt, I have three completed novels and am edging toward the start of #4. I love keeping lists to assist in the shopping, etc, but spontaneity matters as well as acknowledging the best laid plans can be set aside. True creative joy emerges when the heart is engaged, not belabored, perhaps what I need to remember when agonizing over books not completed or class instructions filed away.

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