Quilter's ADD

Do all quilters have Attention Deficit Disorder, or is it just me!?!

I find myself on a snowy evening trying to decide which project I'll work on next.  I just finished binding two give-away quilts, and a third is started with yet another one waiting in the wings.   I'm tired of binding. I'm ready to work on something else!

But what! I've got my Roll, Roll Cotton Boll mystery-to-date all finished, string blocks and all -- and the next installment doesn't come out 'til Friday. Sigh.  The Layer Cake Quilt Along is up to date, too.  So far, so good!

So what to do tonight!?

I've decided I have ADD -- nothing keeps my attention for long....

There's my Dear Jane...Do you know I'm just borders away from finishing the top.  I mean -- the borders are ready to be attached!! I just haven't been in the mood.

The Bali Sea (or Batik) Stars is ready to put together -- blocks stacked in rows, borders determined/pieced and ready to attach when the center in done.  I don't know.  I'm just not wantin' to tie into it. 

Both these projects are on my Finish in 2010 list. I've only got about 15 days -- at least a couple of which will be spent with in-laws and out-laws celebrating Christmas, eating, gift exchanges, dinner and catching up on all the family gossip.

So why am I being pulled to other things.... ?

Like this little slip of a thing from Quilt Shack by R. Norum & H. A. Krohg, called "Wheels on the Bus."  The blocks finish at 6" square.  I have my fabrics all picked out for a blue-billion of 'em so they'll make a large quilt.

Another option is my version of the Clarissa White Alford Quilt....

Clarissa White Alford Quilt, c.1886

I have a couple of blocks completed in civil war repros and the makings of plenty more in a box -- complete with gridded paper (I love Triangulations --   whoa! they have v. 3 now which does half-square triangles in 16th increments and flying geese!!) ready to sew.

And I sooo need to get downstairs to the Hobby Quilter and learn to use it so more of my quilt tops can become real quilts!!

Is anyone else ready to throw out 2010's projects and move along?

Sometimes it's so hard to focus!!

Paul understood how easily we can get distracted from our goals.  "Do you not know," he writes in 1 Corinthians 9, "that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize." (verses 24-27)

It's time to quit "beating the air" -- and settle down, not to a long winter's nap, but to "strict training," projects that need just a little more time and effort, and to accomplishing some goals.  Bali Stars and/or Dear Jane. Bindings. Finishing!

It'll feel good to mark them as "Finished" in the ever growing lists of "To Do!"

Blessings!

Seasons

We've had a beautiful blast of winter weather in Kentucky! One of the reasons I love where I live is that I get seasons -- usually four distinct seasons with gentle springs, hot summers, crisp autumns and cold winters.  Not often, though, do we get snow so early in the season as we've done this year!!  Not even officially winter yet, and the dustings have started....and I'm dreaming of a white Christmas (!), a rarity here in southeastern KY!

The view out my window is encouraging, though!

I think I go through seasons as a quilter, too.
I'm not quite sure how to characterize the seasons, though. They are erratic and unpredictable, and I may go through all four seasons in a day (not unlike the weather in Kentucky! LOL), but each is distinct in its activities and attitudes!

There are the -- what? -- days of "spring" when everything is fresh and new! New projects started, ideas popping like leaf buds on trees.  It's exhilarating and sweet and promising.

Then there are the lazy days of "summer" when I'm content to riffle through books and magazines and dream of projects to do someday, or pull fabric from the stash, fondle it and mark it for later. 

Autumn is harvest time -- I think that's when I am in my "accomplish something" mode.  I've been very productive in the last few weeks.  Lots of deadlines have come and more are on the horizon.  Today I finished the blocks for the Bali Sea Star (or Batik Stars as I have been calling them) from Scrap-Basket Surprises.  They are up on the design wall, and I'll shuffle them around a bit 'til I like the arrangement, then I'll assemble the quilt top.   I've got pairs of rectangles ready to make a pieced outer border.  I expect to get-r-done tomorrow! 

Winter, I suspect, is when I hunker down and hibernate, quilting by hand or stitching down the binding on a finished quilt.  I enjoy my "winters" even more knowing that spring is right around the corner with its promise of something new.

I've heard it told that during his first inauguration, on a snowy day like today, George Washington placed his hand on the Bible open to Deuteronomy 28 in which God describes the blessings He will give His people if they will obey Him.  "If you fully obey the LORD your God," Moses tells the people in verses 1 and 2, "and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the LORD your God..."

And among those promised blessings is verse 12: "The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless the work of your hands."

An apropos Word for a man about to take the reigns of a nation, don't you think?

And appropriate for me, too, in my "seasons" as a quilter, homeschooling mom, wife, citizen, friend.  The work of my hands will be blessed when I obey Him.  Could any promise be more precious to a quilter?

Blessings!

Sleepy in London town

I got a bad case of the sleepies today.  Ugh!!
I was up at 7:00 am, sending a YouTube video to a friend whose secret dream is to sing lounging on a piano! LOL  (She's such a hoot!! :-D)  I sent her -- for all us old fogies who remember such things -- Cher singing V-A-M-P in a bright red evening gown stretched out on an upright piano.  I've linked it below.  Fun, fun, fun! :-D

The boys got their chores done, and school work started, and I got busy piecing my Batik Stars -- a project I started back in September at my first Friday Night Sew In (and there's gonna be two of these in December, the 10th and the 17th! Thanks a million, Heidi!) -- so it was looking like a very productive day.

And then, out of the blue, I was attacked by a viscious case of the sleepies!!! 

 Head lolling, eyes drooping, drool...

Well, no drool, but it's a thousand wonders there wasn't!!

I can't figure out where it came from! I got in bed at 11:30 the night before -- WAY early for me....

I had eaten a nice cinnamon and raisin bagel with a dab (more like a dollop, really) of cream cheese.  Bottle of water (I'm trying to cut the soft drinks so I don't look like the Goodyear Blimp when Jeff comes home).  No meds to make me drowsy.  No heavy labor to make me fatiqued (unless you count the deep cleaning of my sewing room yesterday -- a long overdue project that included a little furniture moving, but nothing heavy as the sewing machine table and TV are on rollers!)

There were no options! Into my room and under the "healing quilt" I went!  All the time thinking (in deep King James soporific tones), "Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep; So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man."  (Proverbs 6:10-11)

Sigh.

And on the heels of that, I could hear my Dad... When we (my sister and I shared a bed when we were young) would oversleep, he would come into the room, grab the quilts at the bottom corners and fan them up and down 'til the breezes on our backsides had us scrambling to put feet on the floor!! All the time, he'd grin and quote, "Awake, O sleepers! and arise from the dead...!" (Ephesians 5:14).

Baptist deacons have weird senses of humor.
I'm just sayin'.
Can I get a witness!?! :-D

Even so, I gave in.
ZZZZzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz

....Two hours later

I returned to the land of the living. Batik Stars here I come! Lunch for the boys! Papers to grade.  Projects to finish.

And "miles to go before I sleep."

Blessings!

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;

He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there's some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.


And for all those who dream of vamping it up on a piano, here's Cher!