Total items completed: 15

Total items currently in process: 6

Days left in the month: 8.
Items left to complete: 15.
Days left until Small Business Saturday when I plan to reopen my etsy store: 4.

I’m starting to feel really excited about Small Business Saturday!

Total items completed: 9

Total items currently in process: 3

Days left in the month: 15.
Items left to complete: 21.
Days left until Small Business Saturday when I plan to reopen my etsy store (Did I forget to mention that?): 11.

So, I’m a bit behind, but I’m happy with my progress.

I’m not a writer, but, as I’m sure you are aware, November is time for NaNoWriMo. My husband has decided to participate. And since I am suffering from sewing burn out, and my dear friend Tricia recommended that I do something for myself in order to break through the burn out barrier, I have decided to participate also. But I’m not going to write, I’m going to sew.  I’ve been wracking my brains to come up with a goal that is similarly difficult to attain as the standard NaNoWriMo 50K word novel.  Should I work in yardage? Sew 20 yards of fabric in November…but then, what counts as a yard?  What if I use only a small square of a yard for a quilt – does that count?  It doesn’t feel right. So, maybe I should work on my planned holiday gifts? But those aren’t set in stone and I don’t think that would be a difficult goal.  Finally, I decided upon 1 item for each day of the month: 30.

Who knows, by the time NaNoSEWMo is over, I may have wracked up enough words in blog posts to actually participate in NaNoWriMo…

No really, I’m asking, who knows?

I’ve completed the Renn Faire costume that was a commission, and Bill’s, Caleb’s and Daisy’s halloween costumes.  Mine is not yet complete, but will be, hopefully, by tonight. Pictures of all these costumes to follow, I promise.

I’d really like to sit back and rest for a minute, but, well that’s not going to happen. The first of many baby showers is coming next weekend and I have a quilt to complete.  I guess the cure for sewing burn out is more sewing. At least, I hope it is.

1. Finish the Wings quilt (beaded dragonfly, hand binding, label, photograph)
2. Finish the monster baby quilts (borders, sandwich, quilt, bind)
3. Renn Faire costume for Pete ($$) (pants, vest, bag)
4. Menswear pillows for Etsy shop ($$)
5. Winter Robes for Katrina ($$) (dress, hood)
6. Business attire for myself (Wednesday!!!)
7. Valance panels for daycare classroom ($$ – reimbursed for fabric)

And in the midst of all that, I have to, you know, be a mom, a friend, make food, go to a picnic, possibly go to the Renn Faire.  So…I wonder if I should invest in a case of 5 hour energy drink…………..

1. Word baby quilt
2. Rail fence baby quilt
3. Monster Baby quilt
4. Monster Baby quilt
5. Wonky zig-zag Baby quilt
6. Baby quilt (pattern undecided – for march)
7. Nautical quilt (etsy store)
8. Nautical flags  quilt & pillows (gift): http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2011/06/how-to_nautical_flag_napkins.html
9. tap pants: http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2011/07/how-to_make_a_custom_pair_of_t.html
10. Halloween costume (undecided! – Caleb)
11. dragon skirt Cancelled since I used the fabric on the tie project!
12. finishing touches on 2 bags (etsy store)
13. finishing touches on 2 other bags (gifts) 
14. Men’s shirt pillows (etsy store)
15. Refashioning vintage Saks jacket
16. Adjustments to dress from goodwill
17. Touch painting art quilt series
18. hash out ideas for Christmas gift
19. screen printed rabbit quilt (etsy store)
20. jelly roll floor pillow: http://www.modabakeshop.com/2011/07/jelly-roll-floor-pillows.html
21. Obi Belt: http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2011/08/how-to_quilted_and_beaded_obi.html
22. Patchwork puzzle ball: http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2011/07/how-to_patchwork_puzzle_ball.html
23. Simple kid’s tie (for Caleb, 8/20) Blogged
24. fabric containers/boxes for smaller project storage
25. reorganize the fabric stash
26. small kaleidoscope quilt (gift)
27. large kaleidoscope quilt
28. Winter robe set for Katrina
29. Summer robes for Angela
30. Program pouches (Valerie’s Wedding, 8/20) Blogged
31. Creative prompt cards, series of quilts
32. Renn Faire costume commission
33. Teach Jenna to use her sewing machine

That’s it for now, more laterz.

I do think part of me is a little OVER-stimulated.  There are a lot of ideas floating around in my head, things I want to make, things I want to write about… so one of the things I’ve been contemplating lately is a to-do list.  I used to be the queen of to-do lists.  I had these amazing lists in college filling up brightly colored paper with the smallest handwriting I could muster and sparkly stickers that I would reward myself with and magically, THINGS GOT DONE.  So I think I will start a sewing to-do list here, just to keep track of the things I want to do.  I’ll keep it going and strike of things that I done, and maybe even develop a little icon form myself so I can get stickers again.  Because who doesn’t love stickers? (Well, I don’t really love stickers when Caleb insists on sticking them all over me, but that’s besides the point.)

So that’s that. I have a plan.  To-do list to follow.

But I know you want to hear more than that, now don’t you?  Like, where the heck I have been for the last 5-ish months? And what’s been going on in the world of hasty quilting? And what even happened to that crazy art show I was taking part in?  Well, I’m here to answer all of that. Just sit on back and make yourselves comfortable.

At the end of August we visited the beach and to make a very long story short, I broke my leg. If you know me in person, you’ve certainly heard all of the gory details and whining and complaining already. I had surgery to put things back together and although it was my left leg, leaving my sewing foot free, I just couldn’t manage sewing for a while. I crocheted a little bit from my place on the couch, but other than that, not much crafting was going on. I finally managed some sewing in the form of a Halloween costume for my little man.

That doesn’t explain what happened from June to August, though, I hear you cry! Well…I was occupied with Artomatic; then I was just occupied. The weather was just too beautiful, the sun was too shiny, the days were too warm. In other words, I have no excuse. Maybe I just needed a wee vacation from the flurry of sewing that lead up to Artomatic. Unless you REALLY want to psychoanalyze my brain, we’ll never know.

So that brings us up to now. I decided, in a wave of medical bills related to the broken leg, and a fit of insanity, that we needed to spend as little money as possible on the holidays this year. To that end, I am sewing, sewing, sewing myself silly on Christmas gifts. This unfortunately means that I can’t tell you much about what is going on until after the holidays because some of the gifts I am making are for folks who read this blog. I do promise to post what I can before the holidays, plus a few holdovers from the summer that I never got around to.  Hang in there, the sewing hiatus is over!

Before I forget, in other important news – I moved my etsy shop from wonderlandquilts.etsy.com to hastyquilter.etsy.com. If you had me bookmarked, please update your bookmarks. And if you didn’t have my bookmarked, then go and bookmark me. In the new location. *natch*

A close friend of mine found an local interior decorator who was moving offices/going out of business/changing things up (we’re not quite clear exactly what the situation is) and was invited to take a look at the stuff that the interior decorator was getting rid of. She was astonished to find that ”stuff” included ROOMS full of fabric: samples, yardage, upholstery, silk, cottons…

My friend kindly invited me to join her yesterday for some free S.E.X. (if she knew that that is what it is called, I think she would unfriend me immediately) and I happily agreed, though I have to admit I was a touch skeptical. We arrived, and the decorator informed us that we were last on her priority list, first being her staff, second being charity and third, us. This was FINE WITH ME.

The fabric selection was astounding. Being a quilter, I could happily take even the small sample-sized fabric squares. By the time I left, I had 3 trash bags FULL of fabric & even a number of beautiful trims, and they STILL hadn’t finished clearing out the back room. Of course, it turns out that the fabrics I really wanted were in the back of the back room. My wonderfully, amazingly, awesomely fantastic friend volunteered to go back today and pack up even more fabric for me, along with some pillow forms and other wonderful things.

Last night I cut open my garbage bags and sat in my living room sorting fabric.  Quilters cottons, tiny pieces, medium pieces, yardage, shears, other, and trims.  I have ideas for about 50% of it. 

Keep your eyes out for some fabulous carpet bags and vintage style baby quilts to appear in my etsy shop soon!

There is a continuation of the journal quilt project going on. It’ll be an online exhibit only. And since my plan is already to make journal quilts, why not enter them? But here’s the dilemma. The journal quilts are going back to the old format of 8.5″ x 11″, vertical orientation. And I had already decided on 12″ x 12″. In fact, I’d already started creating a quilt for the series in 12″ x 12″. I could cut it smaller. I have little to no problems doing that. But I’m not sure that I want to do it, just to get the quilts into a show. I could just finish this one and complete the rest in the smaller format and just not enter this one as one of the three in the show, but I kind of wanted them all to be the same size to tie them all together. I’d like to make the decision before I start quilting the piece, so that I don’t have to quilt unnecessarily. Free-motioning is a lot of work, dontchaknow, and especially when you are working in a small format, every stitch counts.

In addition to that dilemma, I feel like the quilt I’m working on needs more, and I was thinking about putting in a snowy landscape below the moon, but I really didn’t want these quilts to be quite so…literal. It changes the whole perspective of the quilt and it would be changing the point of it almost completely and I’m not happy about that either. But you can’t force art and I am feelin’ the landscape. If only I can make it look as good as it does in my mind.

So anyway…didn’t work on it yesterday because a) I was tired and b) dilemmas.

Any thoughts?