I've posted a bit about this finished top on my blog, but thought I'd save my reflections on working symmetrically for here. In a word, it was hard! Much harder than I anticipated. The difficulty lay not so much in the method; after all the rules of log cabins are quite simple and I'm not an idiot. It was more that I never got over that desire to mess it up. Not in a "oh no, this is a disaster way", rather that I was constantly battling my natural urge to disrupt the pattern.
Am I glad I kept at it? Well yes, I am rather, since in the end there's lots about this that I really like. Will I be looking at more symmetrical work in the future? Not any time soon.
4 comments:
I love to read about your struggles with symmetry. And how you managed to solve these. You prouved that a symmetrical outlook has not to avoid a little "chaos". Good arrangement.
I really love how you kept the symmetry very loosely based and that nothing was an 'exact' repeat. Good idea for overall approach! It's a great quilt top that obviously has your fingerprints all over it, no matter how difficult it may have seemed to you. These challenges are not difficult in technique but more in making ourselves stick with it. So much more difficult than we expect and I think that's at least partly because we've been training ourselves to make decisions intuitively. When we force ourselves to put limits around our creativity there's an instant mental outrage that has to be dealt with. lol I know that I personally have to keep reminding myself that with these limits comes the occasional explosion of creativity within that narrow boundary we've set up for ourselves!
I really like it - I hope you do, too!
The quilt is a beauty, and yes, you're in it. Truthfully though, it's not all you. I read your last post (how could I not?) and understand completely how you feel about symmetry. It's my nemesis at times. And I will tire of a symmetrical quilt at some point. Which is one of the reasons I couldn't jump into this challenge.
Still, you powered through and came out with a fabulous quilt. Go Kaja! Most likely hand quilting will be fast if you use the lines as guides. Or you could take out some symmetrical frustration on it and do exactly what you want. Bonkers to the lines. :)
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