A couple of weeks ago, I posted a photo of these hand-stitched blossoms on Instagram, with the intention of offering them up to anyone who'd like to finish stitching them together. I liked them, but now that I had a whole collection of blue and purple and pink flowers with white and aqua stars in the centre, they didn't jump out at me. I thought I should have made them more scrappy. And I didn't think that it was worth all that hand-stitched time and effort to finish something I felt so Blaa about. But as I was typing up my little caption, I paused. Maybe I should let it sit. Maybe I should ask for ideas or advice. And so rather than give my 12 blocks away, I kept them in my box and pondered, and asked my followers what they would do in my position.

A few people suggested making a pillow cover, which hadn't really occurred to me, and didn't resonate with me until I'd given it a few days to sit in the back of my mind. My husband Tim hates cushions, so I don't think to make them often. And then, you know how it happens...you dismiss an idea because you can't think of how you would execute it, and then suddenly, BAM, your brain makes space for how it could work, and you're digging out that box of blocks again to see what you think.

I feel really thankful that I left this project to sit a while. I don't have a problem with passing projects on. I did that just the other day and I feel good about it. But what excites me with this pillow, is that I really like it, prefer it even, with the simple colour palette, now that it's been made into something small. I would never have thought that would make a difference, but it really did.

I made this pillow using shapes from my Hexie Shape Family pack, and added 1" diamonds for the stars and borders. Don't forget there's only a few days left to link up your Shape Family Challenge project here or share your designs over on Instagram! Stitching these finished blocks together took only half a day. I highly recommend it if you've been feeling stuck with your stitches.

I think part of my feeling of pressure to only make things I love, rather than enjoying the learning experience, like I usually try to, is that I've overloaded myself with unfinished quilts. So I've decided to take a break from starting new things (even though it's my favourite thing to do!) while I give some of these WIPs my attention. I'm going to be thinking about changing designs that haven't grown into what I expected (like my Kaleidoscope Kites, middle right) , making some things smaller (I have a plan for my Nana Mac Quilt! top right), or maybe giving a whole day to basting so that I can have quilts ready to go when I'm heading out (Like my Tiger Lily Quilt, middle left). I might even dig up my machine stitching WIP box and see what I've forgotten in there! I've decided to put $5 in a WIPjar whenever I finish a quilt, and I'll be documenting my progress under the tag #WIPtober on Instagram.

Have you got a bunch of unfinished projects filling up your creative headspace? You should join me! I tried it last year too and it was perfect for finding possible Christmas presents in there!

Paper Daisy Pillow