easing back into things

My motivation for spending time in my sewing room seems to have evaporated as of late.  Its certainly not for a lack of projects to work on, because those are plenty, but for some reason, the sew-jo seems to have hit the road.  I will say, sometimes when I have so many things in various stages of completion, my brain just can't decide what to work on first, so naturally I just don't work on anything at all.

I've seen some elaborate forms of project tracking here and there, and always thought it was a little bit much, but it may be just what I need to keep things organized and prioritized.  I will admit I get some sort of mini high from checking things off a list!  I'm embarrassed to admit that I still have blocks for a do. Good Stitches quilt tucked away in my cabinet from last March.  Eeek.  Anyways, if anyone has any magic tracking/organization tips for keeping UFOs managed, I'd love to hear them!



Anyways, enough boo-hooing about what I haven't been working on, and onto a little something that does have me excited to huddle down in my sewing room and stitch away!  After seeing Natalie's hand quilted Single Girl quilt, inspiration struck, and I needed to stitch with curves.  Like that instant.  I have never made Denyse Schmidt's famous Single Girl quilt, I definitely missed the boat on that quilt along 2 years ago, and thought no time like the present.

I was thisclose to hitting the purchase button for the pattern, but the more I looked into it, the more I wasn't quite feeling it.  Reason A:  Templates.  Ugh.  When I put together my Double Wedding Ring Quilt a few years back, I specifically found a pattern that paper pieced the arcs.  I knew I definitely did not have the patience for cutting templates, tracing, and cutting fabric by hand with scissors.  Reason B:  I wanted more of a circle circle shape, not a rounded square-circle shape.  Reason C: I wanted more space between my circles, and less blank space in the circle center.

So...whats a gal to do??  Of course the only answer is to bust out her compass and random assorted scrapbooking paper (my personal fav for drafting paper piecing templates, as its nice and big at 12" square) and get to drafting a template that was just what I wanted!



Luckily this was not the headache I had envisioned in my head, and definitely did a happy dance when everything came together perfectly on the first go.  My arc templates are made, and are ready to be paper pieced, and I am just waiting on my order of Essex Linen in Natural for the background, and hopefully this will become a quilt top rather quickly!