Progress

I think I have figured out how to find a little time to do some art and quilting. So, I may actually be posting more on here again. I hope. 

Here is what I have been up to:

This is the storm at sea quilt I mentioned in a couple of posts. Fortunately, in this photo, you can't see all the places where things don't line up.  :)  I am not done. I am actually putting it on hold while I do some other projects.  I plan to put a border around it, and of course I have to do a backing and quilt it and put on a binding. But, honestly, the hardest part is done.  There are 1297 pieces that I put together to make this. The bulk of the cutting and a lot of the piecing was done awhile back. I just finally got around to finishing the piecing and putting it all together. It makes me happy.  :)

Storm at Sea

Work in progress

This is the current quilt I am working on.  It is a wedding gift for my sister (a year and a half later...). We are using the material that she used for table centerpieces so it is all in her colors.  I have all of the pieces cut and laid out, and now it is time to assemble.  Unfortunately, I had a little accident with my rotary cutter (not doing quilts, ironically) and I can't sew little pieces together very well due to lack of function with my index finger, so I will have to put this on hold for a couple of weeks.

I can still draw though.  I finished a portrait, which I will post as soon as I have had a chance to show the people who commissioned it.   It went remarkably well, and it gives me hope that I really can do this more often.   It has been three months since the last portrait.  Too long.

That is what I have been up to in between all of the other normal day to day tasks of life. I have felt happier and calmer since I started getting back into creating things. It is a therapy of sorts for me, and I hope to do more.

I finished something

On my phone, I keep a to do list. In fact, it has several lists. I have house projects, art projects, quilts, sewing projects (non-quilt) etc.  This is so, when I find I have time to do something, I scroll down my list to see what I feel like working on. It is also my way of seeing what I have actually accomplished because I keep the items on the list, just with a strike going through them. That list barely changed all summer. Then, school started, and my life turned into an explosion of chaos. It hasn't been the freedom I had hoped for. I am trying to accept the fact that I feel like I have less time to myself than in the past few years. I try not to fall into the "this isn't what I thought it would be like" trap. So, I made a decision to make the entire hour and 15 minutes of my "free" time dedicated to me. It means I am not getting much of anything else done (because the rest of the day I have at least one child by my side), but it is keeping me sane. So far.
I have kind of been in an art funk for awhile. I am not fully sure what the deal is, but I decided that I needed to first get my brain thinking in a creative artistic way again.  So, I looked at my phone to-do list and I decided to work on a quilt. I started this quilt back in February. In fact, I was almost done with the top of it, and then it sat for a long time. so, I decided to finish it. My son needed a not-so-girlish quilt on his bed, so I  made this one. It is smaller than I had originally hoped, but that is okay. He doesn't use most of his bed anyway, and he does have a large soft blanket if he gets cold. I showed him the material I had to work with, and he made up the design. The quilt isn't stellar. It wouldn't win an award (except, maybe, "how not to do a quilt") but I finished it, and there is a lot of satisfaction in that.  here is a photo:

And, now that I have finished something that requires a bit of creativity, my brain is starting to feel a little more artistic. I started a sketch of a portrait I am going to do next. And, I finally put all of the pieces together for the storm at sea quilt that I  mentioned many many posts ago. Now I just need to assemble the blocks and put the top together. I also have two-three other quilts I have lined up, so there is no shortage of projects on my list. I am glad to finally have a little time to work on these things, despite my disappointment of having less time than I planned. And, maybe, just maybe, I can survive this school year.