On Quilting Vacation--or Vacation from Quilting

I had two weeks off for the holidays. Spent the first part of that madly finishing up projects for Christmas. Had thought I'd spend the last week of it (after Christmas) joyfully working on my own projects as a personal little quilt retreat. The reality is, I think I burned myself out before Christmas! I have one quilt that just needs the binding hand-sewn to the back--perfect TV project--and I haven't touched it; I have other projects I'd love to make progress on and haven't even pulled them off the shelf yet.

I've poked away a little bit at my Sisters of the Square class quilt--that's the year-long, once-a-month class I took over the 2008-2009 academic year on Jodi Barrows' square-in-a-square technique. We were supposed to have it done for show n' tell at our November guild meeting because Peg Oppenheimer, the class teacher, was able to come to the meeting and since the vast majority of us in the class are also in our guild, it made sense. Well, it was a busy time for me, and my personal jury is still out on whether I like the technique or not anyway, so I didn't get mine done in November. I got 9 or 10 months worth of the blocks completed, blew off the last couple of months' worth (it's big enough without them anyway), added setting triangles because none of the blocks came out the same size, trimmed them so that they're NOW all the same size, then pinned them to my design wall and brought my design wall to the meeting insead.

Now I'm trying to get the sashing done, then borders, then I'll probably take it down to Mt. Pleasant for machine quilting. I think I actually like the way its turning out, which is a surprise because I really didn't like it all year long. But the setting triangles really help, and I think the sashing will be a nice touch. Got great border fabric for it too. So I may end up liking it in the end!

Anyway, I've only spent about two hours total sewing over the last couple of weeks--quite a change from my pre-Christmas frenzy. Apparently I needed a break. I travel a lot this month so I'm not expecting great strides in any thing until February. Hopefully by then I'll have gotten my quilting mojo back. I have a lot of sewing going on in my head--just need to get it into fabric!