Well, it’s been over a week since my last post. I’m very close to keeping my goal of a post a week…but not quite.

In my last post I went over how I trace patterns onto tracing paper thereby keeping the originals intact. This latest project had a whopping 46 pattern pieces; thankfully not all of them had to be used for the final project!

It is a week before Easter and I have the Easter Bears complete for my two granddaughters. They are really cute, fat and fluffy, just like a stuffed bear should be. There are two sizes included in the pattern, an 18” and a 22”. I opted to make the larger bear.

My youngest granddaughter’s room is in the colors of her bear, the one on the left. I love this color combination (and these pictures don’t do the color justice!). My oldest granddaughter loves, loves pink and loves, loves Shopkins! In her bear, she got both.

The pattern, Simplicity 5461, is very easy to follow and the bears went together without a problem. I can’t say exactly how quickly I got them cut and sewn because it is rare for me to have more than a couple of hours running time to work on a project. It seems to be an hour here, thirty minutes there. I’m sure it is the same for all folks who work full-time but need their creative outlets, which must be done during the evenings and weekends.

I am proud of one accomplishment with this project (aside from finishing a week before it is needed); I almost put both bears aside and started looking at something else to make the girls. But I stuck with them. So, why did I almost put the bears aside? Well, one reason is that I have so many other great patterns in my stash that I thought I might do something else instead. I started telling myself that these bears wouldn’t live up to my expectations, that the girls wouldn’t like them, that they were too big, too complicated, the material I purchased wouldn’t work…just a whole plethora of excuses to stop what I started…just so I could start something else! Crazy, right?

But I do this a lot; start and stop, start and stop. This time, however, I told myself to stay focused, don’t let your mind drift on the thousands of other things you want to do, focus only on this project and get it done. This was a huge hurdle for me. In the end I’m as happy that I stayed focused on this project as I am in the finished product. That being said, I probably won’t stop my habit of ‘pausing’ a project. I’ve always burnt the candle at both ends, thinking I have more time than is actually on the calendar.

Having multiple irons in the fire is who I am. To support this habit I have ‘project boxes’ beneath my sewing/cutting table. These are the paper boxes that can be purchased at Michael’s or Joanne’s. They are the perfect size to store cut patterns or material from various projects which are in some state of completion. This process works for me most of the time. However, in the case of the bears, there was a deadline I needed to hit. Staying focused on this project was imperative. My other ideas and projects would need to ‘rest’ and I needed to be content in the knowledge they would be there another day.