Give Yourself Time to Play

I had a lovely conversation with friends today, and we discussed why we need to consider play as a reward. This was from my friend Elizabeth, who is a dangerously deep thinker. Sometimes she pulls me under. I thought I’d write a little bit about my feelings on play, why I don’t do enough of it, and what I’m going to do to change it. How do you feel about giving yourself time to play?

For me, (because everything here is about me, right?), playtime is a reward. For some reason I always feel like playing is the same as wasting time. I know this is ridiculous, because I have my best ideas when I’m playing. I consider my Kawandi pieces to be play, and they have led me to my largest successes. Playing is when I allow myself to experiment with no risk. I can let my imagination flow and not worry about what will happen. This is what I’m doing when Mom and I do our little class experiments with fabric dying, seashell collage, and charcuterie. (The new charcuterie skillz have been well received by family members.)

I pack so many items on my to-do list, it is ridiculous. I was doing better for a little while, with not saying yes to everything in my life, but I’ve slipped back now that I’m back at home. Submitting ideas to business partners is fun, and I have so many! I’m going to need to slow down a bit and some opportunities find someone else if I want to be able to spend more time playing.

Today’s play was testing an EPP idea I’ve been working with. Of course, it isn’t really “pure” play, because I do think it will eventually result in a pattern, but for now, I’ll just share what I’m up to. I started out playing with these shapes a few months ago – 1″ Pentagon flower petals and 1″ Pentagons, both acquired at Paper Pieces.

I enjoyed the process of making the Kingfisher quilt very much, which features hexagon flowers appliquéd to a diamond. Creating something more unique to me is important, so I spent some time browsing the Paper Pieces website and found the pentagon flower petals. Exciting. I immediately thought they would make lovely abstracted pansies. I did a couple of blocks, added some simple embroidery, and haven’t gone any further.

This weekend, as I was preparing for a family invasion I was taking some deep breaths in my yard and noticed that my cherry tree is getting ready to do it’s annual show. Wouldn’t it be nice to do a cherry blossom quilt. My mind jumped to my 5-petal flowers. That’s the right number of petals, but the petals aren’t quite right. As I made dinner rolls and peeled carrots, I wondered if I could cut off the tips of the petals to make them look more like sakura blossoms. My friends, the answer is “yes!”

Here is my little cherry blossom flower. I’m so pleased. These may get a bit of embroidery in the centers to imitate the pistils and stamens in the middle of the flowers, or they may just live the way they are. Now I just have to decide if I want to set a goal, or just make pretty flowers with no plan. I’m having so much fun with them!

Here are the papers I started with, a 1/2″ hole punch, and the papers I used to make my Sakura blossom. I just inserted the tip into the hole punch partway. With this punch, if you use it upside down you can see the part that will be cut off. Mine probably aren’t all perfectly even, but that doesn’t matter when I am going to appliqué them in place.

I’ll eventually write up a pattern and tutorial for you, but for now, I just wanted to share how much fun I have when I allow myself to play a bit. Thanks to Elizabeth and Deb for being my friends and understanding that I need to be stitching when I’m chatting!

Now, go play! You deserve it.