Monday 9 June 2014

Facing your fears . . .

It's not a huge deal - but I admit it, I've been afraid of stitch-in-the-ditch (SID) with my longarm - after all, that's a lot of machine to move across in a perfectly straight line - with or without a ruler! 

Gail brought me her quilt top that was to be a gift for her husband.  The top had a very masculine feel to it - and the thought of curves or swirls just didn't make sense.  Originally, Gail and I decided (mostly because of my fear of SID) to do more straight line quilting in the boxy areas.  Once I got going with the quilting, I realized that no matter what, I would need to SID around those boxes to make them stand out.  I recall Judy Madsen (Green Fairy Quilts) talking about how she SID around everything - really???? everything? 

But now I see why - and I held on tight to my ruler and went for it.  Guess what??  It wasn't that frightening after all - and I love the result. 



Meandering around the motifs in the centre squares
 





This wasn't the only "fear" I faced in the past while - but the other one had to do with paragliding off a cliff 6000 ft. above the sea somewhere in the southwest corner of Turkey . . . . and, no, I didn't do it . . . just sayin'!

Here's one of my travel companions facing her fears . . . and looking like she loves it!




Until next time - feet firmly planted - at the Little House!

2 comments:

Michelle said...

Hooray Bev. Your SID looks great.

As an interesting (at least in my mind) sidenote, I just read about some enzyme studies done to test stress levels...and the level of stress for a performer, even someone who may have performed 80 or 400 times already, is equivalent to the level of stress of someone making their first or 2nd parachute jump....and the stress levels go down the more parachute jumps they did, but the stress of competition didn't go down with experience.

I wonder how quilting ranks?

Andrea said...

that looks awesome Bev!

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