Break time is over

I've taken a little break from sewing. Life was getting busier, my daughter's recovery from her tonsillectomy was rougher than I expected, and sewing was beginning to feel more like a chore than something fun. Good time to take a break.

One very unpleasant daily task was helping my daughter with her homework. The teacher has been sending home different homework since the new year and we spend about a quarter of the time on it than we did before Christmas. This is a very welcome change! Between you and me, I wasn't expecting any homework in kindergarten anyway.

And my husband has come off overtime, so not only is he home on Saturdays, but he's home 2 hours earlier on weekdays. A very welcome change for time management, slightly less welcome on the budget.

And there's been one other pretty big change. I've been diagnosed as ADD. See, they didn't diagnose many kids as ADD when I was in school. And when they did, it was usually the boys that couldn't stay in their seat. There were signs that would be recognized today. One story I've told several times, just for it's humor value, is the time I simply would not stop talking in class. It didn't matter what the punishment was - if I was around other kids, I was going to talk. So my teacher, Mr. Hullender, moved my desk away from every other classmate's and butted it right up next to his. At the next parent teacher conference, my mother asked him how that was working for him. He said "now I talk to her." Like those boys not being able to sit still, I could not shut up.

ADD has been mentioned regarding my daughter, so almost any article about it catches my attention and last fall there was a news article describing an adult with ADD. The things I read in that article were enough for me to start conversations with my doctor, who sent me to another doctor. I don't think it's ever a short process, and they're still testing different doses of meds on me now, but I feel more stable than I have in years. More capable of actually doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Less overwhelmed by the same duties everyone else does naturally. Being able to focus on my work and get it done in a timely manner is enough to free up a couple of hours a day.

And so, with all this collective extra time I've had lately, I present the top to my daughter's next quilt:

It sure does look huge in contrast to that tiny little face on top, doesn't it? It's a pretty standard twin size, 63" x 81". The print fabrics are Pam Kitty Morning, the solid Kona white, and the pattern is a 9-patch with snowballs. I'm very happy with how this turned out - it's going to be an adorable quilt. Despite the gloomy expression on my daughter's face, she is tickled with it as well.

I wrote about another blogger putting all his fabrics in a bag and mixing them up when he was going for scrappy, so I tried that this time. I think I have identical fabrics next to each other only twice in the whole top. That actually worked much better for me than trying to keep them apart!

I did have some minor trouble with the seams lining up between the snowballs and the 9-patches:

Since the seam on the snowball is at an angle, the seams don't nestle. The best I could do was keep my 1/4" seam accurate and hope they lined up, which they did most of the time:

But if anyone has made one of these and can give me any tricks to lining them up, I sure would appreciate it. And it wasn't until I got done that I realized the white in the panels was slightly darker than white. I've decided this is part of the quilt's charm. Makes the kitty squares stand out more.

Edited to add: Linking up to Freshly Pieced for her WIP Wednesday.