You Can Take the Teacher Out of the Classroom . . .

It’s the REAL final link-up for Good Fortune. I’m going to miss the linkup Mondays: https://quiltville.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-last-good-fortune-mystery-monday.html

Here’s my progress:

I am enjoying the process so much more than last year’s On Ringo Lake because I forced myself to take it slow and steady this year. Do you learn things about yourself as you quilt? I was wondering why I always have so many projects in the hopper. I love the juggling act of numerous quilts in progress all at once. It dawned on me today that decades of teaching small children has conditioned my brain. Years of crafting lesson plans to go from start to finish in twenty five minutes has set my brain clock. And all those “brain break” one minute stretches I did with the students have hardwired my muscles with built-in restlessness.

I just counted my current projects. There’s one halfway quilted on the longarm. Two more flimsies waiting their turn to be quilted, ORL in need of binding, the Bible Sampler, a Christmas lap quilt set for my kids, and the Good Fortune make up my grand total of nine. And I’ve just bought a pattern, “Shimmer”, and have begun pulling scraps and printing foundation papers.

I also realized that I work on the different quilts in an organized fashion. I ran my classroom in small groups, “centers”, so it’s no surprise that I set up my sewing room the same way. I have something ready to play with for every step of the quilting process. What mood am I in? The longarm quilt is waiting. The quilt in need of binding is folded in front of the TV. Fussy paper pieced blocks are stacked on a tea tray. The Good Fortune and Christmas quilts are waiting in their baskets to go out with me when I’m sewing with friends.

The friends have commented on my Jack-in-the-box style of sewing. I’m jumping up to press blocks and lay them out instead of plowing through the chain-piecing start to finish. I wonder if I can blame “lack of delaying gratification” on this retired teacher theory?