No Clue

The Cliff's Notes version of this post:  

• I don't exactly know what I'm doing.
• Not that it matters.
• Whatever I am doing is interestingly uncomfortable.
• That is probably a good thing.

Ever get an idea (maybe even a bad one) that you just can't leave alone?  It starts out a seemingly simple thing, but when that doesn't pan out, before you know it, it has morphed into something unrecognizable.  And yet you still feel compelled to keep at it.

Kind of like a bad poem.  (Been there, done that.)

Let me explain.

Last summer, I bought a bagful of fabric at the thrift store.  There was a little bit of everything in that bag, some modern, some vintage.  There were a few true "dogs" as well, which went back to the pound during my decluttering phase.

This piece I kept, however.  A vintage, I'm going to say early '70s, navy and yellow-gold, paisley-tulip thingamabob.  Yards of it.  Some would call it ugly, and they may have a point, but to me it was...interesting...and I was determined to use it somehow, some way, some day.

The other day, I saw it in the stash and pulled it out and started thinking about what might work.  How about a Lemoyne Star, something simple, maybe use up some other odds and ends while I'm at it.  Here was my little stack.  

Here is how it looked cut and laid out on the table.  Yuck.

I tried this and that, but no matter what, I didn't like that fabric in the mix.

Same fabric, different day.  I played with the HSTs of the navy print and the yellow brick road type fabric.  Maybe I'll just make a simple block.

Bo-ring.  

How about I cut it up and sew parts of it back together again?  

I made three strips.  That was fun.  Now what?

Let's put some other colors around the strips and then cut those strips in half.

Rearrange them on the cutting table a bunch of times, and finally sew them together again.

It looks like butterflies chasing each other.  Can you see them?  Kind of cool how that happened.

But wait, there's more.  Cut a 12-inch square on a wonky angle.  

Lay it on a dark background to see how it might look framed.

Put some other triangles, trimmed and saved from a recent project, around the square just for kicks.

That's where it is so far.  

It continues to pester me like a sliver.  I have no idea where it will end up (possibly the trashcan), but I do know that feeling my way along like this without a map is well outside my comfort zone.  

And maybe that's the whole point?