Too many ideas

Do you ever feel like you have so many ideas at one time, that you just want to do all of them…..at the same time?

That was me on Friday evening.

I knew that Saturday was completely free for me to be creative and it was almost overwhelming to try to figure out what I wanted to do…….

• I needed to make a new mask (since I apparently dropped mine in the Kohl’s Parking lot).
• I have two quilts that are ready for quilting and “FINALLY” I have an idea AND am excited about doing them.
• I want to finish the next step on my Mystery Quilt but want to video one of the processes as I do it
• Since I spent Friday playing with thread painting flowers, I am now ready to move forward on my Meadow Art
• And, to add another level of creative tension, I just found a video series on operating our new camera and, when I watched for 10 minutes, I learned 4 new things!!!

The first thing that I did on Saturday morning was to go for an early 2 mile walk….in the dark!! As I walked, I listened to a podcast entitled “Calming an Overwhelmed Brain”…..it just popped up on my suggestion list which is a little bit eerie!!

The first thing that the host said was that FOCUS stood for…….

Okay….what can I take away from this??

As I entered my studio, I decided that to maintain any focus, I needed to tidy up a bit…..

Once I had things neater, I decided to pull the batting and backing for my two quilts and at least get them ready to baste.

Next was to make the replacement mask…..that didn’t take long.

With a couple of the “tasks” off of my list, it was time to get interested in the Meadow Art project again!! I had purchased this book…..

….and on Friday I had spent some time playing with the flowers designs……

As you can see, they did improve as I went along!!!

Her suggestion in the book was to work without a presser foot…..

…. but the stitches often wouldn’t catch the bobbin thread so I ended up with a free-motion foot instead. The daisies are supposed to be done in a series of long stitches, quickly moving the fabric back and forth as you take SUPER slow stitches…..

I was NOT good at this technique!!!

Then I started drawing the petals with short stitches (#1 and #2) but those didn’t look great either.

For #3, I pulled out embroidery floss and did it by hand. It looked better but still fairly sparse.

Then I got the idea for #4….. machine sew the stitches and then over-sew them by hand with floss. Ding….ding…..ding…..ding…..we have a winner!!!

So, back to Saturday……

I now decided that I wanted my “focus” for the rest of the day to be on the Meadow Art…..adding the “buttercups”.

These were done by taking a small piece of yellow organza and sewing over it using a “whip” stitch. This stitch is made by tightening the top tension to it’s highest level and loosening the bobbin tension, which allows the bobbin thread to pull thru to the top……

Many of these were stitched over a small piece of yellow organza……

After I was happy with the number of these flowers, I went back in and added a few more “grass” lines over some of the flowers so they would recede to the background.

At this point in the day, my creative brain was fried!!! But I have to say that I am thrilled with the look so far……

Oh, I did spend another 20 minutes with the Camera video but there is SO much to learn and I realized that I need to take it in VERY small bites!!!

So “Creative Saturday” is now in the books and, all in all, it was a good one!!!