Procrastination: Nature or nurture?

For those of you keeping track at home, Henry is already five and a half months old. He's huge. He's eating cereal and fruit goo. He can roll over from front to back if he's really motivated. And his nursery is still not exactly finished. It's very close to being finished, but I have one more craft project that's been stalled since before he was born. I'll get to it soon, after I finish the dress I'm making for my work wardrobe (must be done a week from today!). And the Tetris dress. And the raincoat to practice for the green wool coat. And the silk dress to go with the green wool coat. And the Frank Lloyd Wright dress. And all these dresses. And especially this one, with the vintage table cloth in my stash. And that Charley Harper daylily applique skirt I've been thinking about for a year or two. Speaking of applique, that's what this post is really about: Applique, my mother, and procrastination.

Here's what Mom has to say about the nursery she designed and her first quilting project, back in the proverbial day:

When I found out I was expecting, in 1977, we had just moved to [a small town in the middle of nowhere, Illinois]. For our new home I had selected all the latest colors and wallpapers, including a Peter Max interpretation of rural life in orange, green & golds to match the Harvest Gold appliances in the kitchen.

For the nursery, I chose wallpaper with a white background and farm animals patterned so that they actually looked like embroidered pieces. It made the selection of a baby quilt a snap! The color palette was similar to that in the kitchen, but the hues of orange, yellow and green were paler. Dad's family has a long tradition of quilting and handwork, but I had never tried it. I traced the animals to cardboard patterns, then to fabrics which exactly matched the wallpaper. Green gingham curtains finished the room and provided a border fabric for the quilt. I machine embroidered the completed pieces to the white fabric for the quilt top, but I did all of the individual piece embroidery by hand.

It was an ambitious project and it was not completed by the time your sister arrived in October. I continued to work on the quilt top as I carried you, in 1979, and your brother in 1983.

My sister-in-law, your Aunt Susan S., took the finally completed quilt top and marked it, assembled the layers, quilted and bound it. She also embroidered the heart on the quilt with my monogram and the entire span of the quilt's production cycle, 1977 - 1985. I was able to hang the quilt in the wall in the nursery until we moved your brother into a big boy bed and changed the decor to Lego Robots.

Sometimes creativity takes a long time.

MOM

So she started the project in 1977, the last baby in the family was born in 1983 and the quilt was finished in 1985. I'm feeling much better about my one minor unfinished nursery project. It's nice to know where my creative insanity comes from. Whether it's genetic or learned, the source is the same. Thanks, Mom!