a fun-derful weekend so far...

just returned from ny and a bonnie hunter workshop and lecture.  those 7 hours of driving were really one very long design session.  all the way i planned the next 40 or so quilts i want to make heeding bonnie's mantra of using scraps and venturing out of my comfort zone.  i already have the "having fun" part down pat, rest assured.  short but true story here....many years ago i had a friend who made ultra-contemporay pieces.  she had an art degree.  i loved her stuff.  they hung all over the white walls in her home and i felt like i was in a gallery each time i stopped by.  i didn't "get" her designs, but i wanted to know her secret so i took her class.....THREE TIMES!  it was only a color value class, not nuclear astrophysics.  in the first 10-week class, i chose a block pattern.  in each of the next 2 classes, i made exactly one block.  the project got buried out of sheer paralysis.  i simply didn't know what to do next.  when i moved, it moved with me hidden away for someday.  years later i learned she had died from breast cancer.  i felt so sad, especially because of the unfinished piece.  i pulled it out, studied the diagram, memorized and chanted the value rules and finally finished it.  along the way, a bona fide brainstorm!  i felt like helen keller at the pump, seriously.  it wasn't nuclear astrophysics, it was
V-A-L-U-E!  my friend saw my quilts and had told me all along i was "doing it" but didn't know why and she was so right.  when i saw bonnie's quilts, she had the VALUE thing married to the TRADITIONAL thing, which was exactly my ballpark.  i know kathleen weinheimer would be proud of my finished piece, though i see where i should have tweaked it a bit.  i promise, i'm NOT on drugs at all, i've just overdosed on color and fabric!  and please, no interventions....