by Zsuzsy Bee

Created on: September 17, 2007   Last Updated: April 15, 2011

I've been quilting for many years and have made dozens of quilts for family, friends and customers and never, not even once has it given me a feeling of "regurgitation" (what an ugly word).

Each and every one of my quilts became it's own creation.

Anyone who loves quilts and has actually quilted will know that the process of creating a quilt takes more than just to conjure up an image and go for it. Hours can be spent planning. Is it going to be a traditional quilt pattern or free style?

What size to make the actual pattern pieces to interpret into the right proportion.
Then come the colors, shades and hues. Once decided on the color scheme comes the best part (definitely a creative process) finding all the fabric needed. Now comes the (I call it) mock up sample. Where you can see the actual fabric samples pinned together imitating an approximate square or pattern. This is also where you can still mix the fabrics around. By now your really anxious to see what the actual colors and texture combination looks like together.(Positively a creative process).

Over the last eight years I've taught sewing and quilting in my tailor shop in the evenings. I can honestly say that every one of the quilts, and each student started out with the same quilting project (pattern), was different.

Every one of the students used their own "creative process" and came up with a great looking quilt. (Nothing regurgitated there).

As a wedding present in 1973, my now ex-husbands grandma presented us with a quilt. Man-o-man the ugliest quilt you could ever see. (I can say that now, because Grandma Mayeer's been gone for almost twenty years). The nine patch was made of the ever so popular crimpelene of the early seventies . The avocado green, harvest gold, pumpkin orange and brown shades were all fighting for attention.(Grandma Mayeer made quilts out of just about any kind of fabric no matter what). I remember it as if it was yesterday that she talked about how she agonized about the right placements of her squares. About how this quilt really gave her creative juices a run for her money.

I had a really hard time keeping my mouth shut. Let's face it I couldn't be rude, after all she spent the last three months working on that monstrosity. You see even that quilt needed the right creative process to make it look, lets just say,
"balanced".

So no matter what type of quilt, may it be some of the styles that our great-great grandmas made or a crazy quilt or one of the newer postage stamp pattern, no two will be totally alike.

But no matter which hobby is in question it probably has been done before, never exactly the same way therefore the creative process could never be a regurgitation pattern of the past.

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