Linda McLaughlin: Notes from Studio B: Daily and weekly projects and not much else

I'm having one of those times in my life where I have lots of ideas but I can't seem to focus on any of them. I know that all I really need to do is just get started, but I keep getting sidetracked and doing other things. I didn't take a before picture but my pile of unsorted scraps, etc was overflowing the basket on the right side of the photo below.

The pile moved to the top of my ironing table, a few of the larger pieces got put away, one piece got cut up and reassembled to become a top for a child's quilt that I will donate, unfortunately most of the rest went right back down into the pile. That's the way my creative life seems to be going. The ideas are piling up.

I was showing a non quilting friend my daily projects recently and I was questioned about the amount of time I spent on them daily and how do I know what to stitch on each one. So for the last five days I've actually been keeping track of how much time they take. I generally do both the red circle project and indigo and rust in the same time period. I spent between 26 min and 46 min for an average of 35 minutes per day to do both of the daily projects. My weekly ones I do in the evenings in front of the tv and spend between 2 - 4 hours on each one.

How do I know what to stitch on each one is not as easy to answer and sometimes the answer is I don't know, I just sit down and start. The red circles are relatively easy because I'm going to do a circle, I just need to decide how each time. On the indigo and rust pieces I generally respond to some markings on the fabric, but not always. I rarely have an idea of what I will stitch ahead of time, once I've got the fabric and threaded needle in hand I always just start stitching and something emerges. I'm sure that having done this for over a year has made it much easier for me and I did a lot of embroidery kits when I was much younger.

Red circles #100 - #105