Experiments in Demon Slaying

I vowed to myself to use my UFO stack to practice on new free motion stitches.  It seemed like multi-tasking at its best--I would whittle down the unfinished pile and i would also have a chance to improve my skills.  So I chose a wall hanging that was mostly done.  i had put it aside because....well, it turned out to be a boring piece.

So I pulled it out and decided I would do each square in a pattern I hadn't worked on before, then use the border space to practice retracing my stitiching line--bifocals are not really great for that kind of thing.  So I sat down and....nothing.  I couldn't commit to a pattern.  I spent way too much time looking at different possibilities.  The first day I had a break and could have sewn, all I did was dither--'what if it looks bad?' 'what if I don't like it?' 'what if I mess it up" 'I don't think I can do this' Mehehh!!

 I had to smile--I sounded just like my high school students!  And my response to them is usually 'what's your point?' (I know--it sounds a bit rude, but we're talking about high school students, so it's not) When they stop panicking and really focus on the heart of the issue, most of the time they admit that they are afraid of failing. My responce: 'and what's the worse that's going to happen if you do crash and burn? Is the world going to end?'  And since the answer is generally 'no', they usually pull themselves together and go for what they want.

Arggghhhh--I hate it when I'm right sometimes!!!  I was letting my personal demon get the better of me.  And really, the worst that was going to happen was that I'd spend some quality time with my new BFF--the seam ripper!  So I stopped sucking my thumb and dove in.  The first square I used a branching circle pattern and it was so-so.  I worked on Goldilocks in the second square, but it didn't really grab me.  I used a squiggley circle radiating from the center in the third and liked it.  The last square I used a branching paisley and liked it as well.  On the borders I started with a spiral tree, which I really didn't like and ripped out.  I ended up using a vining leaf pattern.  I liked the look of this and it was really good practice retracing a sewing line.  A mostly good day of new patterns and a ufo almost finished; the world seems to still be turning on its axis and there was only a short visit with my frenemy, the seam ripper.  Soooo....it looks like my demon got spanked today!