Dumbed Down

I decided today that I have dumbed myself down as a quilter!  Yes, indeed - my quilting skills seem to have deteriorated by quite a bit.  I have my rotary cutter and EQ5, 6 and 7 to blame.  When I first started quilting, I had no problem at all cutting out about 700 odd shapes using only a cardboard template and a pair of scissors.  Then I would sew them all together, and have a really nice quilt top.  Today, faced by one quilt block consisting of a page of instructions and two pages of templates I almost crumbled.

But then I pulled up my big girl panties, gave myself a talking to and got to work!  This is another QBOM from quilt guild.  I'm pretty sure I didn't do this one due to that little bit of applique.  Oh, and the fact that my oldest daughter was in college, the next two were in High School, number 4 in Jr. High, the youngest was just starting school and I was caring for my husbands elderly grandparents....I don't think I really did much quilting that year at all.  

I didn't dig out the cardboard to make templates, I did use my rotary cutter and did the math to figure out the sizes to cut the triangles and strips - there were some odd measurements, but it all went together perfectly.  Then I did the flowers and leaves with fusible applique.  I almost left the decorative stitching for later, but decided to go ahead and do the machine buttonhole - looks good!  I'm glad I took the time to do this block and revive some old skills...I guess I haven't dumbed myself down so much that I can't function doing things the old way!  I must say that I won't be giving up my rotary cutter or computer programs anytime soon, though - they make quilting so much faster and simpler.  

I'm saving this one on my design wall - it's so pretty I'd like to make something special with it - not sure what, but I'm sure an idea will pop up if I look at it long enough.