My quilty trip to Planet Bulnurooo

....or....

How To Get Creative In One Step!


Step 1 : Vow to finish every quilt you start and then start a quilt that you hate.

That's it!  Fini!  You will be forced into creativity or failure! ;-).


My own creative experience

My journey to "the Planet" began with a huge pile of 2" green squares from another failed quilting experience.  I will spare you that quilt.

In the back of my mind, I've always wanted to make this.

I actually literally had enough green squares to make the whole thing.  However, I hate copying quilts from books.  And I have a penchant for bright colors (think Crayola 10-pack).  So I roughed out the quilt in Photoshop like this.....

Um, I mean, like THIS!

As I started putting blocks together, the result was sort of cute, but not very exciting.  I just didn't have the right fabrics to create what I wanted, besides that fact that it was just boring anyway.  Given that my fabric collection is larger than the GDP of certain small countries, I couldn't buy any fabric.

So, despite a slight, uh, setback in my design process, I proceeded on. The setback was caused by.....

.....Darla, who is my harshest critic and is constantly trying to "redesign" my quilts.  With the quilt above, she may have been right, but still, little missy, some diplomacy is definitely needed!.....

Caught in the act of "critiquing" another quilt.

Yes, with bullheadedness and an "I'm going to finish this, dammit (oops, family friendly) DARN IT" level of determination, I proceeded on....to the sea turtle phase.  Oh my, it really does look like an upside down sea turtle.

Still, I continued sewing and laying out the blocks (why? I don't know)....And it became nice, not so sea turtle-ish, but just so-so-soooooo orderly and unexciting...and oh soooo CENTERED.  Yick.  I was seriously considering letting my canine quilt critic have her way with it again....

....but then I thought, oh my, these fabrics are so pretty together.  I cannot throw this thing into a crumpled pile in the closet delay finishing for another time!  The colors are so gorgeous...

If only....tap, tap, tap.



So, putting on my desperation creativity cap I had a little fun.......

Without further adieu, I would like to introduce....the one, the only, the infamous Tentacle Flower from the planet Bulnurooo (or maybe it's really just a misguided bachelor's button, whatever).

 The quilt is far from perfect.  But it's an interesting conversation piece and will be fun to put together.  If nothing else, it was a creative adventure....I learned something.

Planet Bulnurooo adventure and Step 1 to creativity completed.


I may go back and make some green and off-white blocks with my leftover greens, just for fun.  They are kinda pretty in their own right...albeit a tad ho-hum after the other quilt.

Have a nice day.