Why put off today what you can put off until tomorrow?

I'm totally, utterly incapable of working on one project at a time.

I have all my strip sets sewn for the homespun quilt (hooray!) and have started slicing them up and...hey, wouldn't that wonky pink and yellow quilt look kind of cool if it were hand quilted????

I get distracted so easily I amuse myself.

My kitchen/sewing table is covered with little piles of 2" plaid and muslin pieces, but no worries! You can do hand quilting anywhere!

Which means I can leave all that mess and come back to it later, when I'm partway done with this new endeavor and have begun to feel the pressure to get three quilts finished before the holidays. Or found some other new thing to try -- hand dyeing, perhaps.

No matter that I've never hand quilted before. And that the wonky pink and yellow quilt top was in itself a whim, not intended for anyone and therefore not a priority project this close to Christmas. It's another in a long line of experiments, both successful and failed, intended to put something off that's more important. I'm aware that's what I'm doing, and understand the potential frenzy that may ensue in December as a result, and yet...

This whole hand quilting thing has been in the back of my mind for a long time, and has chosen now, of all the inconvenient times, to cut to the front of the line. And it's not like I can stuff it back there with the belated birthday cards, dry cleaning, guitar lessons and other things I've been meaning to get to -- it was persistent enough to shove its way through the crowd, and it ain't goin' nowhere until I grant it an audition. So...

I spent my pre-work hours today pin-basting the top and putting my newly-purchased PVC lap frame together.

Wish me luck.

Ack! Unwanted setback!

I have put off getting my Bernina serviced for a few months now because I always seem to be in the middle of a deadline. The only dealer at the time I bought it was 35 miles southwest of the city, which doesn't sound bad but in Chicago traffic can take over an hour to get to, so the inconvenience factor is extremely high.

I called the dealer when my oil warning went on in the spring, and she told me how to turn it off, but warned that the machine would do it three times...and the third time it wouldn't go away. And this morning when I fired the machine up, that damn oil can was there, blinking ominously for the THIRD TIME.

Yes, I understand the need to keep my tools in working order. I oil frequently and clean the fuzz out regularly. I realize that not having my machine for a minimum of ten days of service is a small tradeoff for a very expensive but inoperable machine. And I fully intended to get it there as close to my year anniversary as possible, honest. But why now?

I have at least three quilts I need to finish for Christmas, and was on a roll with this latest project. My hope is that I can get all the homespun strip sets done tonight and haul the dang machine out to the 'burbs tomorrow on the sort-of-way to Michigan for the weekend.

Enough whining, Kate. Suck it up and take care of it, already!

Cleaning up just gets me into trouble

I was straightening up yesterday, sorting through scraps leftover from the shadow box quilts, and ended up making these:

I think I was just tired of SQUARES. Also encouraged by the prospect of participating in an improvisational quiltalong (no pressure, AmandaJean!).

Not sure what I'm going to do with them yet. Needless to say, I never finished straightening up.

What I was doing when I should have been doing something else

So instead of bringing my parents' quilt home last year and getting right back to work on it so they could have it by Christmas, I made a whole bunch of other stuff instead.

Two jelly roll tops...

Cotton Candy

Cotton Candy Cabins

An experiment with four-patches...I used some leftover Minkee for the sashing on this one. Not recommended unless you use a stabilizer with it!

Hopscotch

A Monkey'n Round flannel quilt for my goddaughter, my Monkey Girl...

There was a matching doll quilt, but I never got a good picture of it because of this...

Gershwin claims it for his own

My friend Nikki had held on to a stack of fat quarters that her mother had bought many years ago...and wanted to make something for her own daughter in Mom's memory. I got three small quilts, one for Nikki's baby (Imani arrived last Monday!) and one each for her two cousins, Maddy and Sawyer.

All wrapped up and ready to go!

These are 2.5" blocks. In retrospect, I should have made them bigger...

Find the Monkey

I love how quilts look when the light comes through them...

(that's Sears Tower in the background)

Another experiment with four-patches. The dark pink pieces are Minkee dot...stabilized this time!

A quilt for Bella, the new arrival upstairs...

Then my old neighbor had twins. These have yet to be quilted, but are on their way soon...

At least I wasn't procrastinating unproductively...