Quilt Obsessions

Do you ever get so caught up with a great new idea that you are just obsessed with it for a while?  That great new pattern you saw at a quilt shop or in a new magazine, and you just have to buy the fabric to make that quilt right now!  I get that way a lot.  I have to start this project now and I’m caught up in only that project for a while.  Unfortunately that obsession wanes after a while because life gets in the way of quilting.  There are dishes and laundry and dinner to be made.  A dog that wants a walk, family that needs visiting, date night to enjoy, and oh yeah, work!  And that’s how I end up with so many works in progress.  Once life has weaseled its way in between me and my current quilt obsession it becomes hard to get back in to.  The quilt top that I just had to make, lays in pieces in my cupboard, or by some small miracle I finished the top, but it lays unquilted in that same cupboard.  Now it becomes out of sight, out of mind (that works for adults too!) and I move on to my next great quilt obsession.  

I get that way with my blog, too.  I have lists of great tutorials that I should put up, projects that I should post, and tips and tricks that I want to talk about that just don’t make it from my head or my sketchbook onto the blog.  They’re still on my list so I still have the intention of getting them there some day, but those pesky little daily life events get in the way and my train of thought is derailed.  Perhaps my mind just works too fast for me; moving too quickly onto the next thing without fully mentally savoring the last bit.  This is fine when it’s only me that knows about that stack of project waiting to be finished in my cupboard, but with a blog, I have an audience (I hope!) is waiting to hear what I have to say next and see what project I’m working on next.  Therefore, I feel guilty for my runaway brain! 

On the other hand, if I didn’t have such a busy mind, I wouldn’t have all these quilt ideas locked up in there, I wouldn’t be attempting to write a blog and design some patterns.  That busy brain of mine has me cooking up ideas that someday writing this blog, and finally getting in gear and getting my patterns written up, will lead me to a quilting career.  I made the first step in starting my sewing business a couple years ago (one of those quilting themed obsessions) and I had such great hopes and dreams that it would blossom so quickly and I’d be on my way! Meh, that’s not how it always works.  Hard work and dedication are what gets you to the next level of your career.  So I continue to pluck on in hopes that those things will still happen one day. 

Maybe I don’t need to push the quilting aside so that those life moments can happen.  Perhaps I can make them work together.  Like now, I’m writing my blog and making a late lunch for my boyfriend and I. Perhaps later I can think about my next quilt design while doing the dishes, or scope out a new place to take pictures of my quilts while I walk the dog.  That’s seems like a better way to intertwine my quilting obsessions with life.  Don’t make life stop so that quilting can happen, make quilting just another part of life. 

(I’m sure I’ll still find those patterns and ideas that become quilt obsessions though!  I love the excitement of a great new design!)