Losin' it

Chalk it up to a Senior Moment -- I returned to work yesterday to a box from the Fat Quarter Shop. I'd pre-ordered (and then forgot about) a Bali Pop (Bali's equivalent of a jelly roll) a few weeks before I went on vacation, along with two Jolly Packs (5" squares) of none other than the Malibu Monkeys fabric. So not only do I have more than enough of the sock monkey fabric for my Monkey Girl's Christmas present, I have yet another jelly roll to add to my plate. I'm officially overextended.

And then, as a side note, there's this:

These are all the clothes I packed for my week's vacation, planning ahead, apparently, for every possible contingency (cold weather, dinner somewhere kinda nice, golfing every day, a natural disaster that would prevent my return home for a month, etc.). The pile on the right is everything I ended up wearing in the course of the week -- I basically lived in a bathing suit, sweatshirt, one pair of shorts, one sleeveless polo and my pajamas (and yes, I did laundry mid-week) for seven days. The pile on the left was all overage. So instead of the giant duffle I hauled around, I could have saved my back and packed everything in my purse.

Excess, it seems, is the theme of the day.

Will I ever learn? Probably not.

Nothin' like a new book...

...to send me careening off in another direction like a creative pinball. There are at least three quilts in here I'd love to get started on right now.

I'm excited to finally put these two jelly rolls to use -- I picked them up at the International Quilt Show this spring, and every once in a while they call out to me from the stash corner of my kitchen (not the black hole of UFO's -- that's the other corner. I try to separate the two so that the new fabric is ignorant of its potential for living out the rest of its days in a plastic bag).

But work beckons. Oh, to live a life of leisure!

And BTW, here's how the Hopscotch quilt looks now. It's hard to see pale green quilting on white blocks (I'll try to get a better picture, but it involves laying down on the floor and contorting parts that don't contort so well anymore, something I didn't have time for this morning), but I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.

Hi, My Name is Kate, and I'm Addicted to Fabric.

Well, here it is: my first post. OK, my first substantial post.

Having read several fantastic and inspirational quilting blogs over the past few months, I have decided to jump in myself. While I can't guarantee I will provide inspiration, I'll do my best to commiserate with you. It's what I do best.

My joy in discovering the quilt-blogging world was to find that I wasn't alone in my compulsion, or my frustrations, or the ease with which I can drop a project in favor of new one. I am not the world's only fabric magpie, and have good company in forsaking critical tasks for the satisfying hum of a sewing machine. My stack of unfinished projects -- those that confounded me, bored me, tried my patience or just got shoved to the side by the early arrival of twins or an engagement announcement -- keeps growing, and I am forever grateful to the Ziploc folks for finally making two-gallon storage bags to at least keep them organized.

I have too many ideas in my head, and not enough time to execute them. I have too much fabric, and usually these new ideas require buying even more. There's not a flat surface in my house that hasn't, at some point, been covered with quilt blocks. I have more than a dozen rulers. I pour over the Hancock's of Paducah catalog like I'm six and it's from Toys R Us. I can't go more than a few days without sewing something. I see patterns in buildings, and walkways, and try to figure out how they'd translate into a wall quilt. I have called in sick to work to finish a project.

And I'm not ashamed to admit any of it to people who understand.

And for that, I'm truly thankful.