CQJP 2012 Goals

[cq4fun]

I had a lot of time to think today as I was piecing my blocks. I originally had some goals, but as I pieced, I thought things through further. Here's what I came up with as purposes:

• Learn to work with pastels.
• Experiment with a variety of stitches and threads.
• Accept what I like, even if it's against conventional wisdom.
• Use larger lace motifs, and wider lace strips.
• Use resources I've paid for and don't use.

Here's what I learned and how I expanded my goals:

• Pastels: I don't understand pastels. I understand jewel tones and black. I understand reproduction. I understand light, medium, and dark. But pastels escape me. When I look at the blocks, I see things that are wrong, but while I was doing it, I couldn't see it.
• When I experiment, I want to find out how much stitching and embellishing can ameliorate the mistakes in color.
• Conventional wisdom and I are often at odds. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. If you look at my blocks, you'll see a lot of long, straight seams. I *like* long, straight seams. They provide a lot of space for playing with curvy embellishments. I want to use larger pieces of lace, to see if I like them on my blocks, the way I like them on other people's blocks. That takes space.

Some of the tools I want to explore are:

• the waste canvas stitches in the book I bought from Pam Kellogg. I'm not allowed to buy book 2 until I try out book 1 that I've owned for several years! I even know where some of my waste canvas is.
• 
  These are stick on strips that you stitch through. They are pre-printed and cost me about $16 and I haven't used a one in the last 9 months.
• I have the Carole Samples' templates, and have used them a lot - the same 3 or 4 out of 33! It's time to use some of the other ones.

When I was going through Carol Samples' book with a group of friends, I made this journal (click to enlarge):




I've added a section for the TAST stitches:




I'm going to work on the Fly Stitch sampler piece tomorrow, and then be ready to stitch on my CQJP block on Monday.