Centre of the Storm, and getting back on track

I haven’t been posting a note for while as I’ve been, well, unable to write or focus much, as even now I’ve re-written this opening sentence about five times!

My family has been going through some rocky times, each person with their concerns and problems, all affecting me as wife and mother – how can i support them? - how can I fix it?!! (i know, can’t be done) – am I listening well enough? – am I letting them know I’m there to help, without crowding?what can I do other than worry?

My quilting is usually where I dump all this self-talk, and focus on creating, while my brain subconsciously works though the problems. The past few weeks though, this has been difficult, and all I’ve got is several projects, started or finished, that just don’t seem to make me happy. I sure hope I can get out of this slump soon – I do believe that if I’m happy, then those around me might catch it!

I’ve been working away at some piecing and finishing, thinking that eventually there’ll be “click” of aaahhh. this is good :)

This morning I was looking for a picture of a finished quilt, somewhere on my computer. I know its here, because I’ve used it on a blog post. But i cannot find the actual picture, and I’d like to print it out to doodle on for quilting ideas. I also can’t remember under what EQ file name its saved under, and I have too many EQ quilts to count. This made me realize that things have gotten way out of hand – I’ve been in too much of a fog of disorganziation and . So because this blog is meant to share a quilting journal - I better get back to it before I get to lost.

Here’s a finished top, that I completed a few of weeks ago. Its Lori Smith’s pattern, 30’s sampler. I’m not very happy with how the arrangement of colours turned out – the quilt just looks crowded, with no one place to look at.

This is a good example of why I do some quilts as a block of the month. I rely heavily on EQ for my quilt planning, and with a sampler quilt such as this it really can’t be done. I don’t have a full size design board, and if I did, I’m sure I would have arranged the blocks differently, or chosen colours differently.

I finished up the sampler because I got an itch to start the sampler blocks in the new book Sylvia’s Bridal Sampler. I made myself finish this one, which was hard as I knew it was going in a direction I didn’t much like. The new sampler, which I’m simply calling Elm Creek, will be all blues on an ivory background. Much easier for me to work on, knowing at the end it pretty much has to look right with a one colour scheme.

Now, i should go and do some clean up on the blog lists on the sidebar, and remember to use tags and such so I can better organize my posts!