Always a Fight Getting Back Into the Groove

I was finally able to vacate the back office except for the routine, daily stuff. So nice to be able to see my desk again too. Thinking 'Yay! Gonna have lots of quilting time now' and then well, life happened. We had a houseful of teenagers over a long, busy weekend and lots of comings and goings.

Flowering Snowballs in the hoop

So great to see the teenagers have fun preparing for a Valentines formal, looking all spiffy, and then hear later that the guys bailed as soon as things wrapped up. Basketball is so much more entertaining than wearing a tie! Several of us parents indulged ourselves with a really nice meal at a good restaurant, all New Years resolutions on temporary hold of course. After everyone was packed up and traveling back home on Monday, our family sort of went into hibernation mode. That's when I finally grabbed my hand quilting again and settled into my favorite spot on the couch.*sigh

Attempting to see how the stitching will look as a whole...

Sometime later this week I was able to rouse myself enough to head upstairs and check on things in the quilting room. Everything looked sort of uninteresting and I had to almost force myself to pull out a project and get to work. Not that there's any pressure, but hey, I know this feeling and if I don't just dive in, this state of lethargy will still be winning a month later. At first I just worked on the next border to my Improv. Woven Basket quilt. After much contemplation, it looked this was the winner. Somehow a busy, complicated border just didn't look like it belonged.

A simple border plan

While checking on the progress for the Rising Sun blocks {trying to decide if they were really worth working on}, I temporarily stuck some on the wall in a mock-up border idea. Kind of interesting really, as these blocks are a joke. The more I stitch them to the background fabrics, the more I realize how messed up they are. Next time I will hand stitch them as I obviously don't have the skills to piece little bits precisely enough. My current {favorite} methods of fudging, eyeballing and winging it just don't cut it with these kinds of piecing efforts. Maybe if I slice them in half, it will help ease the puffiness in the centers? Just an idea as I absolutely refuse to take them apart and attempt a re-do.

Auditioning something off the wall

But that's not what I was wanting for this particular quilt, so they were quickly shuffled aside. Applique is more in keeping with the general mood of where this quilt seems to want to go. And yes, it's very simple as most of my applique generally is. But it feels right. And that's really all that is needed before the prep work for applique is initiated!

And then settling on a real plan of attack...

Other than that, I've been playing with my fabric stacks. Putting those together with possible new quilt project ideas. Trying to distill those ideas into something definite. This sticking to the '17 ufo's in 2017' quilt list is all fine and good, but I am burning up with the desire to start something new and of course, something vastly more interesting.*wink  Next up will be to catch up on my emails and everyone else's latest blog posts! Plus, my mom just informed me about another one of our favorite from-Washington-on-the-way-to-Oregon quilt stores' closing. What is it with the main street quilt stores having trouble staying in business? We can't be the only people who prefer to {physically} look at and touch our fabric before buying it!