We Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled Program ...

The chief enemy of creativity is good sense. –Pablo Picaso

You might recall, a couple of days ago, me banging on about procrastinating on the quilting for P.'s String Ring Dresden and then finding my creative quilting mojo again. I promised to show pictures of the progress soon — I'm one small smidge past the half-way mark on the background quilting and then I'll have to come up with something perfectly perfect to quilt in the 12 Dresdens. I've been tossing around a few ideas, feathers among them, but haven't landed on anything for certain. But I digress, as this is not the post with all the progress in it. Sometimes, you gotta stitch where your bliss takes you, and after several days of wrangling a big quilt {one of the biggest I've done} under the machine, I needed a little break. So I broke out the needle and thread and yet another work-in-progress.

Why, you might ask, did I pull out another embroidery project instead of just working on the embroidered labels for the Patriotic Sampler, which I have sitting on my sewing table for the specific purpose of using as a "get out of quilting free" card? Because Halloween is closer than the 4^th of July, silly. And there is the outside chance that I can finish this before then if I work on it as my sit-and-wait project.

I started this cute little hat almost three years ago. I pull it out every year as Halloween approaches. And sometimes work on it after Halloween has passed in the hopes that it will bring me that much closer to a finish the next year when I remember Halloween is coming and pull it out again. A year and a bit later, I had most of the pointy cone part of the hat finished. A bit after that, I'd finished the final piece of the hat. Last year, I finished one of the pieces for the brim and started on a second {no post}. Yesterday I pulled it out again, finished the last two pieces of the brim and assembled it.

This has been really fun to work on. It's hard to photograph black fabric, so some of the photos are washed out. But I think my favorite design of all is the one with the pretty purple cone flowers, and the photo turned out nicely, so it gets its own little spotlight.

I'll work on the decorative stitching between the pieces that ties it all together crazy patchwork style, when I have a few minutes of sit-and-wait time {mostly when I go to pick up the Not-So-Little Bugs from school, who, incidentally, don't believe me at all when I tell them that I walked to and from school every day. Uphill. Both ways. In 10 feet of snow. Yeah. That joke never gets old.}. I have my stitches selected for each seam, all mapped out on a sketch with the colors of floss I want to use. I've learned to write these things down so I don't forget. I'll probably need a refresher next year.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some quilting to do.