While Cindy is out west making her best ski-bunny pose, I’m toiling away in my newly relocated sewing studio, dreaming of soft kitties, pink and kind hearts, green grass, and old and unmet lovers. Weird, right? It’s a Valentine’s Day thing. Let’s call it a phase — a pre-spring fever phase.
Ancient History
A couple of years ago, I was all about the red for Valentine’s day decorating. I wanted to banish the soft and frilly pink of young love. I couldn’t bear the sight of cotton candy pink fluff adorning my home. It caused me to make a trip to the local thrift store with some pink decorations that I banished. In retrospect, I must have been channeling Marie Kondo — that pink did not spark joy.
This purge caused me to auction off an early pattern design attempt at February decor: a Valentine’s Day themed table topper, pictured below, at a family reunion that year.
So with all the pink removed from my horizon, I went to the red side for a Valentine’s color-way. I followed along with Jenny Doan of Missouri Star Quilt Company and, with charm pack to hand, created a blood red heart on a field of peach and minty greens to use in my entry hall.
Then a year or two ago I Turned a heart emoji into a message of enduring love. This e-heart mini quilt has adorned my office every February for the last two years (it’s also featured on FaveQuilts today) I still love it, but I cannot feel that passionate red any more.
Things are changing here in my neck of the woods and it calls for softness, a lighter touch, a blurring of the edges, and, frankly, a little wonkiness.
Improvisational piecing as therapy
With these thoughts drifting through my head, I stepped into my relocated sewing room and got to work, trying to lose all the ‘shoulds’, ‘whatifs’, and ‘whatwasIthinking’ thoughts that were chasing around in my mind.
Knowing that I needed to get the beautiful, but very bright red Winter Wonderland quilt off of my couch, I grabbed my trusty rectangular pillow form and got to work sewing together scrappy pink strips and bits and pieces of cream and cotton candy 1.5″ squares lying about. When I had a good shape, I added a little bit of hand sewing as a final touch.
I’ll be ready for February soon-ish.