Power of Now

Yesterday I shared a link to my update to The Duchess. I hope you haven’t run away with the idea that that quilt was ruined recently. It happened over 3 years ago and I’ve definitely moved on and gotten over the experience.

Yeah, it sucks that I ruined that quilt, but I can always recreate her, this time with much better quality fabric, definitely not white!

But this leads to an even more important point: it’s good to learn from the past, but the time to pay attention to is right NOW.

Yep, I’m sharing one of my personal posts today, so feel free to catch up on Quilt Along posts if you’d rather not join us.

As I’ve learned in 2 years of trudging through the drudgery of my past, if you look for pain and sadness, boy, you will find it!

You’ll find a hole that will suck you up and just get deeper and deeper with more pain and blackness, which is why I’ve made a conscious decision to stop being so introspective, and not surprisingly, I’m a lot happier for it.

So as a reminder to this new awareness – to stay present, HERE, not in the past or in the future, but right here in the NOW, I’ve created a simple goddess:

The goddess in the center with her eyes open represents being awake – fully present in the present moment.

All the crazy fabrics around her represent all the thoughts that could be distracting her. Thoughts, memories, worries, pain – they will always be there, but they don’t have to rein supreme.

This is the first time I’ve added eyes, nose, and a mouth to a goddess. I struggled for a few weeks to pick the right colors for her hair and background and ultimately created two faces that weren’t used for this quilt:

This one just came out too dark and I didn’t end up liking the weird combination of purple skin and green lips.

This one ended up too light and I didn’t like how her eyes finished. Kinda creepy…

But these faces were completely put together so I think I’ll use them in a goddess tote bag!

I’m so happy with how this quilt is coming along. I’ve wanted to create a goddess quilt that could look as good on the wall as it could on a bed or the couch – literally a goddess throw quilt – and this one seems to fit that bill perfectly.

So rather than quilt the snot out of her, I’m going to keep this simple and very open. This quilt is designed to be used and enjoyed as a bed quilt, so I don’t want to make it too stiff with excessive quilting.

In many ways this quilt has pushed and pulled me out of my comfort zone. Towards the end, I realized just how much I’ve depended on black fabric, almost as a crutch, when I couldn’t figure out what color would be best in a quilt.

Well I ran out of black fabric with this quilt, so I guess that’s another nudge to move beyond that dependency and try new things!

I still haven’t come up with a perfect name for this quilt, but I’m leaning towards Power of Now. The book this is based on (The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle) has been so extremely helpful, it seems to be a fitting title.

Now it’s time to get this quilt basted and quilted. I can’t wait to curl up with this pretty girl on my couch…wait…that sounded weird…

Oh, you know what I mean! Lol! I’m going to shut up and quilt now!

Leah