Today was all about watching and waiting to see what Hurricane Gustav might throw at us. It felt like a day suspended in time. It was a holiday anyway, so lots of things were shut down - banks, mail, and such. It was my Sabbath. And there was the hurricane. It was a day when the rules about what "ought" to be done could easily be suspended. It was a perfect day for playing in the studio.

I guess it started raining here about 3 p.m. So far we've hardly seen what we could call a storm. There's a tornado watch up, but that's not unusual for this time of year. But we learned with Katrina not to sound the "all clear" too soon. By morning we'll know better what we're actually going to get out of this storm, beyond a town full of strangers. For the sake of the farmers I hope it's nothing more than a night of rain.

I spent most of my suspended day in the studio. I started with the slanted star blocks. I sewed up all the ones I had pieces cut for, and when I pressed them out and added their count to what I already had finished I realized I only had a few more to do to finish making blocks. So I cut more pieces and finished that part of the task. I laid out a few to take a picture. For now they're back to hibernating in their box waiting for the design wall to be cleared off. All 192 of them. Actually 193; having a spare seemed like a good idea. And there are squares cut that can be made into blocks if needed for color balance or something.

After I finished those I was ready to work on the sunflowers. And I started by rearranging the pieces I already had, and suddenly the whole thing came together. I cut a couple new pieces, but basically I think I've got it. I'll let it marinate a few days and see if I still like it before I sew any blocks together. But this is the first arrangement that has felt "right," so if I'm not there yet, I'm getting close.

So then it was time to play with the spring quilt, and that's where I hit a sort of wall. The wall was more a lack of knowledge than a lack of inspiration, so I got on Amazon to look for some of the Baltimore album books that are basic primers on dimensional applique. Discovered that I already had one in my library that I had forgotten about. So later tonight I will look through that one more thoroughly and see what I can figure out. The pieces are still sitting on the pressing table; I'll get back to it another day.

But that meant there was still time in the day and I was pretty much out of projects that I had pulled out of hibernation on Saturday. There were tesselated leaves waiting for quilting, but having started on the machine I wanted to keep going on the machine. I started looking at storage boxes to see if I could find something that would be easy to finish and found the New Year's Day mystery quilt from January. The blocks were finished; they just needed sewing together, so that was relatively painless. The snowball blocks now need something appliqued, so I'll study on that for a while. The pieced border called for in the directions is history; I'll do a border in the theme print I've been saving for a winter project, and call it finished.

So not bad progress for one weekend. The studio got cleaned and a bunch of projects got moved forward. I had no illusions of actually finishing anything; I just wanted to get my brain used to the idea of playing with fabric again. Considering that all the flat surfaces are once again covered in fabric, I guess I'll call the weekend a success.