A Reasonable Plan

Gaston:  LeFou, I'm afraid I've been thinking.
LeFou:  A dangerous past-time...
Gaston:  I know.

from Walt Disney's Beauty and the Beast, 1991

This is something a friend and I regularly sing at each other when one of us confesses to thinking.  And I have been thinking. 

Last year, I moved from project to project never quite knowing where I would end up or what would be next.  And even though there is going to be a fair amount of that (my future-telling isn't working so well these days), I think I have some concrete things to accomplish this year.

1. Finish the last commission quilt. I have incorporated the first verse of Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing into a wall-hanging for a wonderful client in Ohio. 

All that is left is the quilting of the background and it will be finished. Which will free me up for...

2.  The auction quilt for my daughter's school.  She is in the fifth grade, which is now the last year of elementary school here, so this is a milestone year for the class.  On top of that, this is the first fifth grade class the school has had in several decades; until two years ago the school ended at third grade, though it had originally gone to sixth grade.  All to say, this is special and I had better come up with a fantastic idea.  I will be chronicling the development of this one.

The first auction quilt in 2005, with Alyssa's pre-K class

3.  I have wanted to write a children's picture-book for some time, and now I have a pretty good draft. The big thing is that I want to do the illustrations myself as a series of fabric collages.  This is a huge undertaking, but I am so excited I can hardly stand it.  Details will follow as work progresses.

Those are the three major projects I see for this year.  There may be a show here or there that I would like to enter, but here is something else I have been thinking: I can't do everything.  Easy to say, hard to remember, but I'm trying.