Looking into the Future

There were some absolutely lovely older quilts out there. In looking at some pictures of vintage quilts a friend took at a show, it makes me wonder. Will anyone look back on our quilts in a hundred years and wonder about us? Will we leave behind an interesting design pattern that people will talk about (like the crazy quilt)? Or do we repeat the past quilts so much that it won't be anything new? Of course, the quilts that win in the huge shows are worth talking about any time. They'll be in pristine condition for a long time too. Of course there are what we consider "art quilts." They're unusual enough, huh? *grin*

Another odd question for you. Will our introduction of all the reproduction fabrics ever 'harm' the ability for future people to date our quilts? I will admit that I only ever put a simple label on my quilts. I never put my initials or date directly into the stitching of the quilt itself. Makes me wonder if I should start doing that....

Anyway, just going "thoughtful" on the future here. I sure hope that the quilts we make today are as loved and treasured in the future as the older quilts are for us today. *smile*

Beauty in Simplicity

Today, I was going through Baum Textile's free patterns and discovered what my tastes are for the day. While I normally go for the flashier and more difficult quilts, I found myself falling for a pretty tan, white, and black quilt called "Colonial Beauty." It uses Windham's reproduction fabrics, but of those, I'm not a big fan of. So if I ever make it, I will just use what seems right to me at the time. "Colonial Beauty" reminds me of a simplistic tile floor. I don't know. It just really reached out to me this morning.

I actually find it interesting how our tastes in art or what we like changes from day to day. Mine can actually change from moment to moment! LOL I have started thinking the past few days that I want to make so many quilts and I have so little time. Perhaps it is time to focus on creating a few block 'kits' to take along with me to various places. When I have a moment, take it out and sew for awhile. Goodness knows I'm spending enough time at various sports practices this year and it's only going to get worse! I only have 2 boys in sports right now as the youngest is currently too young. That will change in another year or so.

Hmm... Speaking of sports, I'd better get a move on. I need to get ready to take my oldest to his football game.

To Quilt or not to Quilt

Yes, that is definitely the question this evening. I'm still working hard on that football quilt. Sorry for lack of pictures, but well... I'm like that when a quilt is in progress. For some reason, I never take any.

Anyway, this evening, I ended up with a humdinger of a headache. I got it earlier and it just kept getting worse. I finally 'diagnosed' it as tight muscles. I'm a naturally tense person and I find myself tensing up over everything. Everyone keeps telling me to over come that tendency, but I'd like them to live my life and see how tense they get! LOL

Of course, when I quilt, I constantly find my shoulders up around my ears. Every few sections of piecing, I have to remind myself to put my shoulders down. Same while reading, and even now while I'm typing on the computer. If I stress over tightening up my muscles, then I'll make it a source of tension in and of itself. Nasty dilemma, huh?

So I elected to warm up my "Bed Buddy" and watch TV. Really odd as I just received a brand new book in the mail today as well. It's the next in the Inheritance Series by Christopher Paolini. It's Brisinger if you're interested. Remember the movie "Eragon"? Well, it's loosely based on his first book of the same name. I had read the book first so couldn't enjoy the movie. People who did it the other way around loved both of them. Lucky people. *grin*

So here I am. Wanting to quilt, a new book to read, and I have a nasty headache that won't allow me to enjoy either! It's SO unfair! I guess I'll just have to live with it, won't I? I think I need to warm up my Bed Buddy one more time for my shoulders and just wait it out. Perhaps I can quilt tomorrow night. I won't stress over that as I already know that I won't finish this quilt in time for football season. Maybe I will finish it in time to be good padding for the bleachers for wrestling season. Hmmm... I sure hope that the colors aren't too off. LOL

Oh, as a note. A "Bed Buddy" is a rice-filled pack that you heat up in a microwave for sore muscles. I swear by mine! Best money I ever spent.

Progress

Well, I made a lot of progress today. I even changed my mind on the backing, again! I'm getting really good at that. Here's the reason why. It's even a good reason! *smile* As I was cutting the strips for the back of this quilt, I realized that the prints on all of them were printed horizontally instead of vertically. What I mean by that is that they didn't run selvage to selvage, but lengthwise. If I sewed them together to be a vertical strip on the back of my quilt, they'd all be sideways. That sort of bugged me since all of that fabric is of a patriotic theme. So, I vowed to be really careful in putting it together and keeping it going all the same direction. That way, it will be easier to look at and well... All be facing the same direction. I'm just AR enough to do it that way. *grin*

I ended up ironing and cutting 8 yards of fabric today! I even cut out the borders to the quilt while I had my cutting table set up. Needless to say, I was rather tired when I got done. I think it took me around 4 hours. Or somewhere in there. I took breaks periodically, of course, so I'm not sure how long it took me to just stand there and do it.

After dinner, I ended up taking a short nap. I've been running on short sleep hours all week long and it's catching up with me. I woke up and I've been drowsy and groggy ever since. My body keeps telling me to go back to bed. However, I want to do more work on this quilt. I want it done ASAP and that requires constant work on it. Unfortunately, we all know what happens if you try and quilt when you're tired. It's just not pretty. I'd end up spending quality time with my seam ripper (after I found it) when I was more awake tomorrow. So, to make up for the "no sew, no cut" rule I have when I'm tired, I've been slowly pinning the fabric together to get it ready for tomorrow's sewing. I sure hope that I'm not pinning anything together wrong! Otherwise, I'll still end up spending quality time with my seam ripper.

Hmm... Maybe I should just call it quits and get to bed. That way, my fabric is safe and I wouldn't have to go on an all out hunt for my seam ripper. *grin*

It Takes Time

Oh, boy! Does it ever take time to put a quilt together. Silly me. Here I was, thinking I could pull this quilt off in 2 weeks, and now I'm hoping to be able to have it done by the end of football season. I put in some serious work on it today in the hopes of finishing soon though.

I decided to go with the longer sections and strips for the backing. So, I did a ton of work to get the rest of the top ready to go to be quilted. It's not 100% ready as I still need to stitch the rows together. At least the rows are done though. Well, then again, maybe not. LOL See, I just realized that those strips on the back will be horizontal strips. Just a little while ago, I decided that I didn't want horizontal strips. I want vertical strips. So I need to actually make 3 more rows before it's ready. Grand. I keep making this darn project larger. Told you I was silly.

Here's another thought for you. Have any of you 'heard' me say that the backing was ready yet? I haven't, have I? I wonder how long that will take. Sheesh! Me and my big ideas. Oh, well. I'll get it done eventually. I think I'll spend my quilting time tomorrow finishing up these rows and then begin prepping the backing. Though I do need to rework my numbers and see how many strips I need to cut. I have 8 different patriotic fabrics of varying amounts. Most of them I have 1 yard. Though several I have only 1/2 yard. I figure I'll use up all of the 1/2 yards and then fill in with the rest. Hopefully I'll have enough fabric. *smile* If not, I will be using narrow enough strips that I can probably sneak something else in there and call it close enough. LOL

With all of that rambling, I'm finished quilting for the day. I worked on it for at least 5 hours. You know, it's absolutely amazing how quickly time adds up on a quilt. Oh, well. The finished project is almost always worth it.

The Backing Dilemma

Oh, dear. I have been sitting at my desk for the past 30 minutes crunching numbers for a backing. I'm a little frustrated, to say the least. It's almost easier to just follow the directions and buy a huge chunk of fabric and piece it the way you're supposed to. However, I decided to be difficult on this particular quilt. I decided I wanted it fully pieced. Right then. In crunching numbers, I don't know if I have enough patriotic fabric to pull it off. That's pretty interesting considering I have about 9-10 yards of it in my stash. So then you're probably thinking, "Why in the world would it take that much?!" Well, it's because I don't want to quilt it all in one huge piece. I mean, I only have a normal sewing machine and it is a twin-sized quilt. I'm not 100% sure how large "Study in Blue" ended up being, but I had a heck of a time quilting that critter. As a matter of fact, I got so fed up with it that it took me almost 4 YEARS to make! I really don't want that to happen with this one. Then again, this backing is about to drive me insane. LOL

So, then I started thinking, "Well, what if I changed how the sections were divided? What if I did it in larger chunks?" Same amount of fabric needed as the smaller pieces. Okay then... "What if I did it in large strips? You know, all the width with a small bit of the length?" Well, less fabric needed. Great! Maybe I'll do that. Umm... That's still 77" long even though it's only 27" wide. You'd think I'd still grab at that, huh? I'm silly like that sometimes. I'm being thrown by that whole 77" thing. Well, that and I was so jazzed that I had a section finished that it's making me sad that now it's not finished and it needs a lot more work before it's ready. Oh, well. The way I'm procrastinating on this quilt, it's not that big of a deal. LOL

I wonder why quilters always forget how long it takes to make a quilt. We see the finished product and then we think, "Oh, that didn't take all that long to make." We forgot all the washing, ironing (I know, it's supposed to be pressing), measuring, cutting, piecing, more pressing, etc. We forget that the quilt we just finished has 100s of hours worth of work in it. Silly quilters. Fast quilts are only for companies that sell in large chain stores. LOL

Okay. Well, I guess I'll "suck it up" and just do it in full width strips and call it good. It's better than doing the entire thing all at once, right? The only problem now is that I'm not sure I want to do the back in 7" blocks. Now, I think I might use strips... LOL Time to go figure that out now! Ugh. No wonder I keep procrastinating on this quilt. Maybe I should just keep working on the top and figure out the rest later.

Batting and Joann's

I have progressed far enough in my "football quilt" to need batting now. However, my stash had been depleted to the point where I don't think I have enough of any one kind of batting to make a quilt this size. So, yesterday, I dragged my boys off into Joann's. (I now it's only Joann, but that's so silly. I like that 's' at the end better.) Now there was a shocker. By the time I got back to the batting section, I was rather upset. Our particular Joann's only carries polyester batting now! It's like walking into the fabric section at Wal-Mart to look at their batting. Not a pretty sight. They no longer carry the Heirloom batting and they definitely didn't have the thermal batting I wanted. I think it's called ThermaTex. Then there was their so-called 100% cotton batting that was 80/20. Let me know what that's good advertising! Sheesh! However, on my way out, I noticed that they now carry this eco-friendly batting made out of 50% bamboo and 50% organic cotton. Like I said, eco-friendly. Expensive stuff too. However, I had to see what it felt like. I mean, bamboo batting? How weird! Imagine my surprise when I reached into the bag and felt it and felt one of the softest battings I've felt in a long time. I mean, it was so soft that my only thought was, "It sure is a shame to have to put that inside of a quilt." Then my next wonderful surprise was that it didn't need close quilting. It could be quilted up to 8" apart. I like that kind of batting because there are just times where I don't want to hide my quilt's visual pattern in misc. quilting. Okay, and I'll admit that I actually don't like the final quilting stage. I like to get it done as fast as possible. So I'm a weird quilter, no big deal. I enjoy quilting for the color combinations, not the actual quilting part. *grin*

So, needless to say, I now have a bag of bamboo batting sitting in my living room. With a 3% shrinkage, it's perfect for my needs. Now, to only get the backing fabric prepped, pieced, and that first section quilted. You know what? There's no way this quilt is getting finished in time to be used for this year's football season. Oh, well. It turns out that my middle son just found out that he adores wrestling. Maybe I can fold up that quilt and use it for bleacher padding during wrestling season. *grin*

Quilted tonight!

Well, I guess it still qualifies as "tonight." I haven't gone to bed yet. I'm a night owl by nature so I like to stay up late.

Anyway! I worked for 2 straight hours on my new quilt. I managed to get one 24" panel done. In case you don't know, I'm doing a twin-sized quilt in the 'Quilt As You Go' style. I've cut it up into several 24" panels and a few are larger. So, 2 hours netted me 1 panel and some random sewing on the other sections. I'm a huge fan of "leaders/enders" so I just used other parts of the quilt as my leaders/enders. It worked out well and got me closer to finishing more sections. Maybe I'll get more done tomorrow in 2 hours than I did tonight. Or rather, further visible progress.

What makes me sort of sad is that, the entire time I was working, I could only think, "This is boring." Wow! I don't remember the last time I ever thought that while quilting!! Then again, I'm going through emotional issues because my husband is gone at the moment. For all I know, it's just backlash from that. I was hoping to do 1 full bobbin's worth of piecing, but gave up when I finished that first panel and all the center sections that I had ready to go. I just didn't have the patience to just sit and put together the bars and the 2" squares that I still have to create.

I have decided to piece a backing together out of all the patriotic fabric that I own. I have tons of it! So I think I'll cut out 7" blocks out of several of them and then piece them together for the back. I'll probably start the work on that tomorrow since I have a panel ready. Maybe my boys will let me go to Joann's and get some batting so I can start quilting it. If not, I'll force them anyway. LOL If I only get one panel top ready a night, I'm in "trouble." I'll never finish it in time for the end of football season. Or if I do, it will be within 2 weeks of it ending. Oh, well. I'll still do it because I've already decided to create a utility quilt out of it.

The top of it will look really cool as it's in my son's football colors. I made the background black with a rich red (not a true, bright red) as the only other color. Though there might be some touches of gold in it here and there in the 2" squares. I cut up some leftover Oriental fabric that I had and it had some characters in gold here and there on it. This shade of red was "precious" in my stash and I can't match it without buying more fabric. Since I didn't want to do that, I figured I'd put up with the gold. *grin* Except for the batting and maybe the thread to quilt it, I won't buy anything for this quilt. It's time to use up some of my stash. Not that my stash is really large, it just needs used. I want to prove to my husband that those fabrics really do have a use. *grin*

With that, I suppose that I should call it an evening. I should probably get to bed so that I can set up my next amount of sewing tomorrow. I prep during the day when the light is best for cutting and then sew at night. I just find that the easiest way to do it. When I get a little further into it, I'll put in a picture of my new quilt. Maybe it will even get finished this month. That would be exciting. *grin*

Books and Reading

I came across a blog, which apparently is a "blog of note" to Blogger and found an interesting topic. What book are you embarrassed to have NOT read?

In going through the comments, the same books kept coming up. Oddly enough, Lord of the Rings ranked pretty high in there. As did the usual Moby Dick, War and Peace, Pride and Prejudice, etc. You know, supposedly the ultimate classics.

I have read a lot of books in my life. However, I never find myself feeling bad or embarrassed if I haven't read one. I just add them to my list of what I want to read and keep going on with my life. Though I was embarrassed to not have read some authors, like Ernest Hemmingway. Well, I've read one of his books now, have found him to be very depressing, and my life will continue. *grin*

No, I'm widely read and I don't feel too bad if I've missed something. If I even attempted to list what I have read, it would take next to forever! I also know that I've read obscure authors that most people haven't read for several reasons. First off, my favorite author's books are only on the bookstore shelves for a very short period of time. Second of all, I have yet to find a library that even carries her books! So, that gives to a very small readership. If you're interested, and can find any of her books, the author's name is Paula Volsky and she writes fantasy/pure fiction stuff. It's hard to describe her. Her world is completely made up, but some of the stuff she writes could have come from our own history. Illusion is a good example of the French Revolution with a lot of magic thrown in for fun. *smile* She's just a fascinating read, but be prepared to think your way through her books. She's fun to read, but not easy to read... Figure that one out. *wink*

I don't know. I just can't bring myself to feel too bad about books I haven't read. By the way, Edith Wharton is an incredible author. You should give her a try sometime. *smile* Now, I do feel bad about her. She wrote "The Age of Innocence" in case you're interested. I had put that one off forever! I finally read it this summer and wish I hadn't of put it off for so long. I loved that book. That reminds me, I've been meaning to check out more of her books. Silly me! *smile*

What if...?

Here's an interesting "what if" for you. What if you made every single block on the Quilters Cache website? I was out there yesterday trying to place a block I was making. I never could find it, but that's okay. I was just curious if it had a name and it wasn't that big of a deal. It's an incredibly simple block and is part of many blocks. However, on page 54, Marsha announces that one of those blocks is her 1300th block. There are approximately 75 blocks that come after that. So, you'd need to make a minimum of 1375 blocks with Marsha lovingly adding more blocks all the time. Could anyone actually do it? I'm just curious. I'm actually almost curious enough to try it. LOL I would personally exempt myself from making several of the blocks just because I have already made them.

I have used her patterns for Irish Plaid (my example is actually on her site), and I did Nelson's Victory (one of my quilts is there too). I have done a few others. I think Comets is one of them. I'm pretty sure I've done more than that, but I can't think of them right now. Of course I've made many of the blocks just because I pulled the patterns from other places.

However, think of it. How many quilts could you make out of 1,375 blocks? Goodness! A lot comes to mind. *grin* A twin sized quilt I'm working on right now has 154 blocks in it. They're all 6" which is why it takes so many. So... Wow. I don't know. I might still have to try it. *grin* I want to know if I can make every single block on her site. I don't know if I'll actually do it. It just would be fun to try.

I know, I know. I'm weird like that. *grin* However, not this evening. I have a quilt already all cut out and awaiting piecing. I should get going on that if I want it finished before football season gets too cold. Or, in my case, over! LOL So I hope that everyone has a marvelous evening. I think I'll go see about starting to put that quilt together.

New Quilt Started

It's a miracle!! Did anyone here trumpets sound yesterday when I ironed fabric and started cutting for the first time in months? LOL Just kidding. Then again, you might have if you lived closer to me because I did have my stereo on a little loud at first. *grin*

I have decided to go ahead and do that black and red quilt. I measured off the 5 yards of black I needed off of my bolt of black (I think I'll cry when I use that all up) and tossed it into the wash. While that was going, I set about pulling several reds to start cutting up. I ended up using 3 different fabrics in the red department to pull this off. No big deal though. I mean, I just cleared out more space in my "red drawer" to add more later!

Then, I proceeded to cut up all that red fabric to get it ready to sew together. I tell you, I was pretty sick and tired of it after cutting out 81 3.5" squares and 308 2" squares. As that got me into the late afternoon, I held off on messing with all the fabric I'd washed and dried earlier. I then discovered that when I rearranged my living room, I failed to put my cutting table near a good light source. Oops. That means I can't cut at night. With winter coming, I think I'd better get a lamp set up on my table. It's just that I actually keep it folded up now when I don't need it. So the light source didn't cross my mind when I moved the furniture around.

The quilt is going to be twin-sized when finished. I'm also going to use the QAYG (quilt as you go) method and break it up into 4X4 block sections. That will put each section at about 24" square. I could probably do it larger than that, but that's okay. I'll figure it out more as I get closer to that stage.

So anyway! My huge chunk of black fabric is sitting by my ironing board awaiting my attention. I ended up washing a lot of fabric that had been needing to be washed and ironed most of that last night. However, my back was definitely letting me know that it was not amused at this "new" treatment before I got to my black fabric. I guess I'll have to ease into it, huh?

With that, I think that I'm going to get going. I don't feel a strong urge to quilt today so I'm just going to force myself to do it anyway. I want to get that black all cut out so that I can collapse my table. Considering it takes 5 yards of black for this quilt, how long do you think it's going to take to cut it all up? LOL Yeah, you're right. I'd better get going if I want that table down by tonight. *grin*

I want to write!!

My mind starts to scream at me, "I want to write!!" So I get out a piece of paper. That beautiful white paper with pretty blue lines and a pen that is just waiting for my words to be written. Or it's my computer screen showing me a white background with a flashing cursor waiting for my fingers to fly across the keyboard to produce letters on the screen. The entire time my mind keeps screaming, "I want to write!" So I say back, "I know. I'm waiting. Now what? Where's my character? Where's the person I can bring to life? Who is my hero or heroine that I can lavish my love on. That I can build worlds and adventures around?" Then my mind answers back quietly, "I don't know." Then the urge fades away like everything else. Softly, as if it was never there, it fades away. Then I am left staring forlornly at a blank piece of paper and holding a useless pen. Or I'm left staring at a blank screen, the cursor blinking sadly at me awaiting my commands. My mind has abandoned me. The same mind who wanted to write so badly failed to produce the one thing I needed to start. So I quietly put my pen and paper away. I quietly hit the 'X' in the upper corner of my word processor and call it a night.

Now what?

Well, as I was just telling a group of friends, today is a day made for quilting. We had a lovely rain storm come in last night and it has decided to hang around. Weather forecasts are saying that it will be here all day long. My oldest was supposed to have football practice this evening, but it will be canceled. Our city doesn't like having its fields destroyed in that manner. School will be a light day due to the way our program is set up. So now what? Well, I've been saying for some time now that I have felt the need to quilt building up. So, it's time to do something about it!

Now for the ultimate problem. What to work on?! I've only been quilting for about 7 years, but I've built up a lot of UFOs (Unfinished Objects) and ideas in that 7 years. Not to mention a lot of fabric.

I've been playing with the idea of making a quilt for football season as it gets colder. I'd make it a nice large one. However, our football season is over Oct. 18. Is it worth actually stressing out over getting one finished in time? I just couldn't tell you. Of course, it would still make a lovely quilt to just use from here on out. I just don't know if I want to put that kind of importance on it.

In trying to help myself with my dilemma, I went out to my best record of what I've done. That would be my Webshots album. I used to have this great journal that I'd been keeping of everything I'd been working on. Of course, I can't find the silly thing anymore. Then again, I did start one on paper... Hmm.... I wonder where that went? LOL It might be tucked on a shelf in my sewing cabinet.

Okay, that does it. If you can't tell, I'm completely clueless right now as to what I want to work on. There are the things that I WANT to work on and then there are the things that I SHOULD work on. Nasty things, those "shoulds" So, how about if I meander off now and go do some research. Then I might be able to narrow down what I want to do. Well, either that or drive myself completely insane. That's always possible too. *grin*

I knew it!!

TaDa! I knew it would happen sooner or later. The quilt bug finally bit. It's almost hard enough to make me want to wash some fabric for a new quilt. The background is to be all black and all of my black is Moda. I bought it when a quilt shop was having a 50% off sale or something. It's a pure black, no mottling, with Moda's wonderful feel and weight. So, I bought an entire bolt of it. Needless to say, I never washed it and now I wash it as needed. It's the one fabric I'm sure of having enough of when I need a lot. Soon, I'll run out and then I'll be sad. This was a one time purchase for me.

Anyway, the reason behind my new quilt. First of all, it's for me. It's to be all black and red. I came across the perfect pattern in a baby quilt book of all places. LOL They have a version that uses a single background with 4 different fabrics, all the same shade. Well, I can take and toss out the need for 4 different fabrics and just use one.

Oh... the reason. I'll get there eventually. *grin* My oldest son now plays football. As we all know, football is inherently COLD! We're already dropping happily into the 50s on some days. So, I decided that I wanted a football quilt. My son's team colors are black and red. I love those colors (more black than red though, please) and decided to make a quilt. The pattern I picked is simple enough to put together. The only drawback is that I want to make it big. We're talking around twin size. I want to be able to spread it on the ground for the family or wrap everyone in it as needed. So that's going to take a lot of fabric and a lot of cutting. I haven't really thought about the quilting part yet. Maybe this is a good time to try the "Quilt As You Go" technique some more. I only have done that once seriously in the past. This time, it doesn't matter what it will look like all together. I just want it done!

So, I will get started on that soon. Maybe I can start by washing the fabrics tonight. Is a football quilt worth "wasting" lovely red batiks on? *smile* I have some gorgeous red batiks that would look wonderful. Maybe I will. I mean, I need to start clearing them out so that I have an excellent excuse to add more, right?

Yup. The quilt bug has bit. May it last all winter long. Heck, may the bite last long enough to dig my way to my fabric that's stuck in my son's messy bedroom! Oh, boy. That thought right there is almost enough to make me want to give up. Ugh. Oh, well. I will persevere and get it going! I want it done within 2 weeks. Think I can do it? Okay, that may take a miracle, but I'm up to the challenge. *grin*

It's Coming!

It's coming! I can feel it! LOL That is, my return to quilting. I can feel it building up. It has been for a few weeks now. Our temperatures are falling below the 80 degree mark now and that makes comfortable quilting weather. I'm almost wondering what would happen if I "forced" myself to quilt. I'm so close to finishing up DSW's quilt. It was half quilted when I got hit by my anti-quilt 'wall'.

I'm actually wondering if I stopped quilting because that's also about the time I moved my quilting stuff out of that bedroom for DSG and moved it back to the living room. When I set it back up out there, I made sure to set it up so that I could work on things. However, all of my drive to quilt died. So... I'm not sure how to "spruce" it back up again.

Actually, I'm getting ready to reorganize my living room again. It's just set up all wrong and it's way too crowded in there. It's time to start getting rid of a lot of things and see if I can't find a better way to organize everything. I also need to do something about our "school room." Right now, we just use the kitchen table. Unfortunately, a lot of their things require wall space that I just don't have in there. Ugh! I wonder if I can snag my neighbor and get him to help me move the couch out. The boys never actually sit on it. They just turn it into forts all the time. LOL They might miss it, but I know that I won't! I'm sick of walking on the couch cushions all the time and saying, "Pick up the cushions and put them back on the couch" constantly all day long. It's annoying.

Oh, well! I'll get this all figured out one day. When I start quilting again, it will be great! I can almost feel that urge quilters get to just sit and handle fabric. If you think about it, we're really weird like that. *grin* I think that if I 'force' it right about now, I could get quilting again. After I move the living room around. Then watch out! That sewing machine will hum again!

So Sad...

Okay, in the land of quilters, this is terribly sad. I was browsing a few sites that I like to look at for patterns and fabric and realized something. I'm still not interested in quilting! That is such a sad thing. I just can't seem to jump start my engine, so to speak, and start quilting again.

I don't know if it has anything to do with how my living room is organized. As that's where my quilting stuff is, that can be important. I organized it shortly after my desire to quilt died at the beginning of the summer so my idea wasn't to keep it easily accessible. Now there is so much piled over there that I probably couldn't use one of my machines even if I wanted to! The "joys" of living in a home where there just isn't enough room for everyone.

I guess that it's time for some serious reorganizing. Time to dig through things that we own and ask, "Do we really need this or is it just taking up space?" Of course, with quilting stuff, surely it's not taking up space. Then again, some things we bought way back when just isn't going to be used. At that point, I guess it's time to pass it on to someone who will, huh? Of course, I'm not sure where all of that is... My house is such a mess!

Before Labor Day weekend, my house didn't look all that bad. Then we went camping. When we came back, things just started to get flung everywhere when we got home. I now feel completely lost again. I think it's time to devote some time every day to organizing. I'll get my house back at some point, right? We'll just ignore my sons' bedrooms. I have one son whose stuff is 'leaking' out into the hallway. That has to be addressed. As for the rest of it? As long as the door can be shut on it, I'm cool with it. LOL I might tackle it after I get the rest of the house clean. That will take awhile. Maybe by the time I'm done with that my urge to quilt will return. That would be nice. Especially since I left my middle son's quilt about half way quilted. Isn't that nuts? I was going good on it and then BAM! The anti-quilting wall jumped up in front of me and that was the end of that!

As of today, I have no urge to make anything. That's incredibly unsettling to me as I normally have to work on something at all times. I guess my house is getting to me and smothering my creative ability. Yes. It is time to tackle my home and start getting it cleaned out. This is getting ridiculous!

Hmmm.... I wonder how long this is going to take? I actually find that a scary question!