I'm trying to practice the discipline of spending 15 minutes a day at a task, even on the days when there is no time. I'm spending my 15 minutes redeveloping my hand quilting skills. I used to love to quilt by hand; in fact I started quilting on "cheater quilts" where there was no piecing, just the quilting. But then I made some quilts that really needed to be machine quilted; at the same time I got drawn into the thinking "faster must be better." Before long I had quit hand stitching anything.

But I've also come to realize that I prefer sitting quietly with my feet up on the sofa working with my hands. So I'm working toward getting my hand stitching back to where it used to be. It takes time to build up the callous on the finger underneath, and to remember all the little tricks that made the stitches small and even. But 15 minutes at a time it's coming back.

As something to practice on I'm working on some double pinwheel blocks I acquired in a swap from the Frenz group. Adding the corner triangles makes a block big enough to hoop. The quilting pattern is a kind of snowflake design that I found in an issue of Quiltmaker. Here's a finished block.