Forcing Progress

I had to force myself to make some progress on this piece, and had to do some firm positive self talk and set some limits. These are the things I needed to tell myself:
-there are no "right" answers, only what I like and what I don't like.
-there are no BJP police to tell me that my decisions were "bad" or "wrong".

-I only have 8 more days to FINISH this piece and then must move on to the next month's piece, but in order to finish, I need to start!

-I do not have to figure out every step or "like" the piece after every decision.

-I just need to make the next decision and try something.

On the right is the fabric I finally selected from my big pile of hand painted fabrics. The others were eliminated for being too distracting, too "flat", too dull, too pinkish, too blotchy, too dark or having "empty" colourless spaces. I narrowed the decision down to 3 pieces and then did some playing with the scraps and felt happiest when I was working with this one as the background. I also picked this one because I like the variation of colour, and the "drying lines".

In forcing myself to progress, I set a time limit for this decision and just starting eliminating pieces - with or without a reason, and moved into a place of believing my intuitive self. It was much better after that. Then I cut the chosen piece to 8.5" x 11" leaving a 1.5" border around just in case I want to fold it to the back at the end. On the left is the photo of auditioning threads and I was thinking about how to machine quilt the background. I did not allow myself much time to think about it, made a quick, rough sketch and started quilting. On the right is the piece after quilting (although the colour is not right in the photo). I really enjoyed the process of machine quilting and although I don't love this outcome, I reminded myself that I won't see much of this work when the piece is finished. And also told myself not to get attached to any stages of the work, because it is always evolving into something else.

Next step is selecting the scraps and forming a design. I don't have to figure it all out...I just have to finish the next step!