January.  Not my favorite month.  Here in the northeast, we have had a very mild winter, so I really can’t complain – especially after last year’s onslaught of winter weather. 

Still, the lack of sunshine and short days just gets to me.  (I am rejoicing that it is still light at 5:00 p.m. now that we’re into February!)

So I had great plans for blog posts and other bits of my new business, but January got in the way.  On top of my full-time job, my volunteer time for the non-profits and church in which I am involved took bigger chunks of time than usual.  And then there was the driving trip to Minnesota to see relatives and to Iowa to drop my youngest back at school - 2,900 miles in four days. So my great plans went nowhere. Lots of guilt!

Now, I’m trying to get back to it, and panicking.  And then - shower-inspiration this morning!  I’m human, and so are you.  We all have “stuff” that gets in the way, and gets in the way of our love of quilting sometimes.  So…

I am going to spend some time in my blogs telling and showing you my process and progress in planning, designing, and choosing fabrics for my quilt projects.  This will give you a chance to see the principles I teach put into practice, but it will also show you that it is a process – that we are ever-learning, that sometimes it all goes smoothly, and that sometimes it just doesn’t.  Practice makes perfect, and sometimes inspiration is almost within our grasp…but not quite.  Tomorrow is another day, and looking at my project with new eyes can make all the difference.  (Sometimes it takes a couple of tomorrows and a trip to the quilt shop!)

Today’s story:  here is the photo that I posted on January 1st (I really did have great plans for January!) of the trees and the light in my backyard.  I thought it would make a wonderful black and white quilt of some sort.

My husband gave me a lovely gift card to my local quilt shop, Quilted Threads, for Christmas, so I took my camera with the photo and the gift card in hand, and opened the door to the quilt shop.  In the entry area is a large collection of Japanese Daiwabo fabrics, which come mostly in taupes and soft earth colors.  Now, I’m not really a taupe kind of girl…so I generally take a glance and walk right through the display to the brights on the what’s new shelf.  But, this day, I saw some blacks and thought I’d stop.  After all, the daiwabos often have great tactile texture, and what does a tree trunk need, but texture?

I held up my phone with the photo next to the black fabrics, which happened to be next to some blues.  The photo popped!  I thought blacks and whites were what were in the photo, but I hadn’t noticed that in the wider screen version, there were blue shadows in the snow, and blue, blue sky surrounding the light behind the tree.  All I had “seen” were the blacks and whites in the central part of the photo, but the blue fabrics brought out the other colors, and showed how important they were to the overall composition and beauty of the scene.

Needless to say, the shopping trip took a bit longer than I'd planned!  Here are the fabrics that I bought as a start for this project. (And now I see that I may ditch the light blue fabric...!) It will be fun to see how it plays out!