Distracted

 I've not blogged in a bit because I've been off wandering -- mentally -- in the Land of Too Many Distractions.  Family life, home-schooling (all GOOD distractions, of course) ... I've not just been able to focus.  I've picked up books and magazines with beautiful fiber art, and I've thought "how wonderful" and them put them down and have not felt the urge to move into the sewing room.

I've been picking up my camera, instead, and taking pictures on my daily wanderings. That has felt manageable time-wise, and has satisfied my creativity.  I seem to be in the throes of another severely insomniac phase, so playing with Photoshop is a good, peaceful activity for the middle of the night.  The photo above is from a recent vineyard walk. We're approaching harvest time here, so the vines are laden with grapes and look so lovely right now.

I've had some fabric moments, lest you think I've totally abandoned all things fabric.  I've been making progress on my City and Guilds activities, so I thought I'd share a recent project.  The assignment was to select a photo of an architectural element, then to design a paper-pieced block and sew it.  As usual, I made it harder on myself by hunting for photos and taking pictures and drawing block designs repeatedly, striving to find one that I fell in love with.  I wanted to create a block that made me itch to sew it, that made me gasp with delight.

 It didn't happen.  And somewhere, after slaving over graph paper and designing things on Electric Quilt 6 (that sure does make seeing the results of designs easy), I realized that I just needed to do the dang assignment and move on.  If I didn't love it, fine.  The point, of course, was to show I knew how to design and sew a paper-pieced block.  Which I'd done umpteen times over, on my quest to find The Perfect Design.

So, here's where I ended up.  I started with this photo, liking the detail in that four-square motif there in the center: 

That led to this block, which I liked for its birdish design:

And here's how it look with four together:

Phew.  Assignment done.  But I sure did make it harder than it needed to be.