I survived!

Term July holidays are over and I'm still alive with sanity intact - Mat was away for over two weeks with a short week at home with a couple of days away in the middle so I was doing it single-parent style. If Hazel were younger I think I would have snapped, but she's now at the age that all you have to do is add a friend and they're happily occupied for ages on their own. Not that I actually got much done during those times though! I keep thinking "when things go back to normal then I'll have more time to get things done" but I think this IS my new normal - routines gradually change as time goes on, even if you're a stay-at-home mum, and I need to just adapt my expectations to what is now and stop waiting for things to change.

One thing I have done though, is take on my first commission for Helen at the Little Craft Store. She couldn't do this last-minute baby shower quilt and asked if I would. I've never sewed for money before, despite many people telling me I should. My standard reply is that I'm too slow to make things that are affordable and I generally still hold to that, but this quilt was actually faster than I expected and I think it's because it wasn't mine - I didn't have to agonise over fabric choices, a nice simple pattern was given to me - not my problem at all! The brief was that this lady's mother had died this year and she wanted to include some of her clothes in the quilt. Helen weeded out the totally inappropriate and I was left with three light, synthetic-blend dress fabrics and some stabiliser and assorted quilting cottons! Needless to say it wasn't exactly smooth sailing but I got there. Luckily on such a busy quilt the mismatched corners don't show up too badly - despite the fusible interfacing on the back the dress fabrics were still pretty stretchy and made my life a bit hellish a couple of times!



The thing that I found most interesting about this was the process of sewing something I actually don't like - I tried very hard to warm to it but it's so not my style that I just don't and never will. I could never spend the time on something of my own that I disliked that much, but oddly I find it's perfectly ok to do it when it's not yours! As long as the lady who commissioned it is happy then that's the main thing - and I also know other people think it's quite nice :) It's always such a shock to realise that perfectly sane and lovely people have completely different tastes to you, but hugely liberating because you don't have to dismiss them out of hand for it and can be friends. I reserve the right to shun you if you support the wrong political party though...