A frustrated crafter

I've been a frustrated crafter lately.  I have so many wonderful projects that I want to get started on, but can't seem to get to them!

For Silver Bella, I'm participating in several swaps.  Four of them, including one that I'm hostessing, require me to bring the finished product with me to the weekend, and only three of them are due in advance.  I'm, of course, working on those three first.

I've already spent a blissful hour or two up to my elbows in my boxes of trim!  I chose a nice variety -- 21  pieces -- to send off to the Vintage Trim Swap late last week.  I'm a couple of weeks ahead of the deadline, so I'm doing well!

For the Vintage Bling Swap, I've been buying vintage and antique rhinestone pieces, such as stray charms, earrings, bracelets, etc.; I needed 20 pieces and have just about gotten all of those together, between Etsy, Karla, and my own stash.  Now I just need to trim excess hardware off the backs, and attach a jewelry bail to each piece.  Before now I didn't even know what a jewelry bail was, so I'm already learning and growing through Silver Bella!

The other swap that I need to send ahead of time involves making 15 pages that will be swapped with others and combined into a journal -- all antique papers.  I'm excited to begin this one!

My next sewing project on is quilt I'm making with Angela's help.  It's going to be a memory quilt of the patches Ben earned during his Cub Scout days!  He has so many...and they are so cute!  I designed the quilt a couple of years ago, but never got past that stage because I'm not a "sane" (as opposed to crazy-) quilter and I just didn't quite know how to start.

Angela came to my rescue: she looked at the design was actually able to make sense of it!  She told me how much fabric I needed to buy and send her.  I need to do the middle of the quilt -- the big fleur de lys which I wlll cover with the patches -- and then send that piece to her and she'll piece and sew the whole thing together!  Then she'll send it back to me so I can hand-quilt it! I'm excited!

I also have some orders for embroidered Day of the Week towels, and some custom tags to begin working on.  And another quilt that I have decided to put together from this beautiful, hand stitched postage stamp quilt top I've had for a while; I decided that rather than sell it or cut it apart, I would like to try my hand at finishing it!  I also need to make more pillows for my Etsy shop.   And then there are those other swaps to complete before Silver Bella...

For now, I've had to content myself with decorating a teeny, tiny pillow that I made from scraps from one I sent Linda Sue.  I created it, of course, from some of the beautiful fabrics she sent me; Linda Sue's pillow is shown above and below:

;

So, this is the one I made with the snips and bits of leftovers, plus added beads and lace:

The feeling I get from creating is like a huge sigh!  It feels so good, and I know I must make more time for creating now that summer's just about over!