One my recent trip to Rhode Island for the "MQX" Machine Quilters Expo. I took a wonderful class from Cathy Wiggins on finding your creativity. The name intrigued me, but I had no idea what I was in store for. She sat us down with a workbook and crayons. We had to color a picture with our 5 favorite colors, then the same picture with our 5 least favorite colors. That was hard. Then we had to trade our crayons with someone else and color with their favorite colors. It sure was a challenge, when it should have been so simple. The proof was there. We do really respond much more readily to our favorites. After some exercises she had us take out magazines that we brought along. We cut out picture of things that we loved and put them in a pile. Then we had to break out our quilt magazines and rip out the things that we really liked in them too. As with most of the class, I freaked out at cutting up a quilting magazine. Cathy kept telling us that only keeping what inspired us was way better than keeping everything. Having so much around to look thru, takes away from the inspiration for the things we loved. (Yeah right! I was still sniveling about cutting up my quilt magazines even when I left. ) We took all the photos and pasted them into a journal that she provided us. On the plane ride home I kept thinking about that journal that we started. I did enjoy looking at the few things that were in it. Could it be, that it did really speak to me, because there were no distractions?????? I made a commitment to myself to "try" to clean out my old quilting magazines. The pile above is what was left after taking out the things that I loved. 2 bookshelves worth of magazines are now gone! Now that was a freeing feeling! This, I am happy to report, what is left from that challenge! I am sure loving the looks of it! :-) .
I was very generous in what I chose to keep, after all it was 10 years of treasures! The patterns from quilting magazines went into plastic sleeves in a 3 ring binder, and things that spoke to me are now in my journal. We all have those calendar photos that we can't part with, and those special greeting cards that we love. I even added some photos of quilts that I found online, along with some things from online quilting magazines. What I am left with, I find myself thumbing thru almost daily. I'm not sure if it's the colors, the designs and patterns or just the lack of things that detract, that "speaks" to me, but I just can't seem to get enough of looking thru my books. I have read quite a bit, online lately from those who have done just this same thing, and the one thing I am hearing over and over is, that tastes change as years go by, and many find that the patterns they just had to save are now being replaced with new. Throwing out the old must get much easier as we grow into this. Another point, well made by one wise person, is that if we live to be a hundred, we will never manage to stitch out all the things we have kept for years. So I guess purging isn't really a bad thing now is it? Sorry I need to get back to looking and drooling over my journal! :-)
Oh yeah and finishing up those darn PIGS! :-)