On Pinwheels, Prairie Points & Paying No Attention

A few weeks ago I called one of my aunts. In the middle of making the quilt above — the very first quilt I’ve ever completed, mind you — I’d run into a snafu.

“Aunt Kay?” I asked, “I’m in the middle of making a baby quilt with Prairie Points and it says I have to ‘baste’ the points to the inside border. What does that mean? Do I have to use a special stitch?”

She laughed just a little. She always does when I call her with these questions. And said, in not so many words, you’re making a quilt with Prairie Points and you don’t know what baste means?! What are we going to do with you?

I have this thing with sewing. Actually, with everything I do. You might call it being blissfully ignorant, but ignorant is such a negative word I like to think of it as operating spontaneously. Which is a pretty way to say I don’t read directions! Or pay any attention whatsoever to popular culture for the industry in which I intend to try my hand at things.

And it works!

It works because it removes the psychological hurdles that may otherwise sabotage my efforts — or worse, stop them in their tracks before they even get started. If I had known that I needed to be familiar with ‘basting’ before I’d started making that baby quilt would I have begun it at all? Maybe. Maybe not. But not knowing how to baste would have been an easy excuse to employ had I been less than motivated. And that would have been a damn shame since that quilt was the ticket to checking off one of the items on my Life Palette.