Rough Draft

I finished the first draft of my novel today! Wow. Now to let it sit and percolate in the back of my mind and it will be off to revisions (and more revisions) starting some time in January. The advice is to let it sit for a couple of weeks while I do other things.

That would be quilting.

I've been working on a project as I've written this month. It didn't go as well as the November quilting. It seems when I'm writing, I need something in the quilting stage, not the creating stage. It is harder to multi-task during the creative process. I want to use all my creative energy on one or the other, not divide it between two different endeavors.

This is what I'm working on right now:



The leaves feel too far to the right, so will need to rethink what to do next.

Finally Finished

The large quilt I've been working on is finally finished. It is large: 46 1/2" high by 52 1/2" wide. Any ideas for a name would be gratefully appreciated!



This one took forever to completely. Guess that is what I get for starting (and mostly finishing) a book in November. It was an interesting process. When the writing wasn't working, I'd quilt until I knew what to write. I've started a new quilt. Hopefully it will work the other way too!

I'm going to try to keep track of creative process (a warm up for the Take it Further Challenge http://sharonb.wordpress.com/take-it-further-challenge/)

So to start it off, here it what sparked the idea:


Here are potential fabrics:



I'm intending to use mostly the black and white with only a small bit of the greens for shock value.

To start, I freehand drew a stem on the fabric in pencil and slashed it with my rotary cutter. I placed one of the greens underneath and I'm reverse appliquing the black to create the stem. This is what it looks like so far:



Hopefully while I work on this, the next idea for what I'm writing will come to me. I know what it is supposed to be, but not the execution. Sounds like how I quilt.

Goals

I don't do New Year's Resolutions, but set goals for myself instead. Losing weight will be back on the list of goals again this year unfortunately. I put weight back on after I purchased a vehicle.

On my list of goals for the next while:

1. Finish my NaNo. I made the 50,000 word count by the end of November as desired, but I still need to complete the story. My goal is to write another 30,000 words by the end of December. That is only 1,000 words/day instead of 1,666. Easy.

2. I signed up for an quilt challenge for 2008 called Breaking Traditions. The guidelines will be sent out later. Okay, so far so good.

3. I'm doing an art doll challenge--create a quilt that represents yourself. Think paper doll. Clothes, shoes, hair. Zwinky's here I come. Yep, still cool(ish).

4. I joined the "Take It Further" challenge (http://sharonb.wordpress.com/take-it-further-challenge/). Each month for the next year, a coordinator will post a challenge and we have one month to complete the task, including posting our progress during the month. Hum, I think those might be beads of perspiration forming. Oooh.

I once did a personality test. My results told me I'm the type of person who likes to climb slippery mountains. There was something about my shoes too--of course--but I can't remember exactly how it went. So I've pulled out my stiletto's and I'm good to go.