Learning not to think

I'm a thinker. I mull things over, obsess, worry. I spend so much time thinking about how best to do something, sometimes it keeps me from doing it. I am not spontaneous. In college, I quit the clarinet--which I'd played well for years--because the next stage would have been for me to play improvisationally, and I just didn't have the nerve to do it. I love ballroom dance (it has rules; I can follow), but am self-conscious just moving to music. I love to sing, and can learn and hold a second-soprano part with ease, but ask me to make up a harmony on my own? Forget it.

So it's interesting that my favorite quilts tend to be the improvised ones, rather than those that follow a pattern.

When I began my crazy log cabin quilt, I was thinking too much. Each block took me a very long time, because I'd cut a piece, search and search for the best piece to go next, think about which pieces should come after that, think about what size and shape I wanted the pieces, etc. Then one day I just cut a whole bunch of pieces randomly, so I'd have a bunch ready to just grab. They were in nice neat color-sorted piles, and I was still spending a lot of time looking for just the right piece.

Then last night, I took my color piles and jumbled them up into baskets. I liked it so much better already--I could see at a glance what I had, and the juxtaposition of pieces beside each other in the baskets suggested possibilities.



I knew I wanted to start a block using a small piece that featured a girl in bed with a rooster on the bedpost. That meant using a very wide piece against the center block, making it almost double-centered. But I didn't obsess about it. I glanced, made a quick choice, and sewed. (In fact, I was being so spontaneous, I messed up--you'll see it if you've made log cabin blocks before. Oh, well. I chose not to worry about it and kept on.)



And in the end, I love how it came out. I did another block using the same method, working too quickly to think it over too much. I generally knew which color I wanted next, and I sometimes chose and rejected one piece before settling on another, but that was about as much thought as I gave it. And it worked.

How wonderful. Sometimes, not thinking is exactly what I need. Now if only I could apply it in other areas of my life...