Self Inflicted Stress

I had a wonderful Monday morning catching up on paperwork and emails and was enjoying a leisurely cup of coffee when the phone started ringing. It was as if the Quilting World knew that I didn't have any school commitments this week. Within a short space of time I had agreed to take in several customer quilts, stitch a huge sports day banner for Freya's house at school, visit a craft shop to discuss teaching workshops, and set up an appointment with a fabric wholesale rep. In addition, there were numerous emails arranging the APQS stand at Festival of Quilts, replies to my queries about entering quilts for Houston and a lesson with new longarm quilting pupil who was delighted at the random circles we placed on her quilt top.

I crossed my fingers that I would not get any calls from schools so that I could fit everything in since my self-imposed deadlines are starting to alarm me. I have to complete and photograph the new Norse triptych by the end of May. I have now drawn out 3 identically sized patterns and the gold bird-man is set up and ready to go on gold vinyl snakeskin. I have made hanging sleeves for the Ostrych pieces so that I can hand sew them all on when I am hanging around at school swimming lessons.

Despite worrying about my expanding quilting To-Do list, I had a day out with Tania catching up with another friend on Wednesday. I bought a Danish fabric bread basket in a gift shop simply because I thought it could be adapted in many fabrics and sizes. I was intrigued by a new method of making bunting so perhaps I should make some in honour of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. When I got home I ordered a screen printing kit as we had been talking about spending some creative time together. Tania has an unopened candle making kit, Mo wants to paint some goose eggs and I want to take more photographs. I would really like to quilt a piece of oilcloth fabric ready to make some new kindle covers and bags but I have had to tell myself that this is not a priority until after the triptych is finished.

I quilted some freehand sunflowers onto a customer quilt that is a single piece of fabric printed with French fields. The background will be filled in later with some green swirls and loops. I didn't want to work on other people's projects all weekend so I decided to complete Freya's Christmas quilt made from giant hexagons. I think I finally have set-in seams with quarter inch stops and starts sussed. It was fairly time consuming but obviously did not take as long as hand piecing. It was fairly greedy on fabric but ideal for stash reduction. It would be fun to make a quilt from plain fabrics but appliqué other hexagons or shapes onto the large pieces or just fill them in with some very nice quilting. The idea of the scrappy Christmas quilts is not to do complicated quilting but those are possibly famous last words!