So I did it. Spent 7 hours with only a break for supper in the studio on Saturday. Hello artist. Glad to make your acquaintance. Where you been?

OK, I used that sneaky strategy discussed in a previous post, did not start something grand and new and itching at the back of my eyeballs. Did not even start work on either of the two commissions that I have in the works. (Sorry, if you are one of the collectors waiting, but I did tell you my summer was shot.) Couldn't do either of those scary tasks just yet. But I could and did take on something swimmingly ready for completion: a collaborative art quilt by San Antonio children who attended the Botero Library Family Days this summer.

As one of the hands-on projects, I had grided a print of one of Botero's paintings, copied and enlarged each rectangle, make sketchy place-holder lines on tracing paper, then copied the lined images onto cotton backed with WonderUnder that I ran through the printer/copier.

At each workshop. kids and parents added color with fabric markers and watersoluble crayons, then others added stitches and buttons and beads. Probably 60 or more children actually contributed to this art quilt. What was interesting about the process was that the boys were the ones who really were turned on to the stitching. I think sewing is so rare today that it has become "de-genderized." When I first taught, sewing was one of those things that most of the boys considered "girl stuff." Maybe now the needle has a certain dangerous appeal?

Anyhow, I spent the day's work assembling and free-motion machine quilting, finishing the art quilt. Tomorrow it goes to the central library for display.

Was it the work I need. long, to be doing? No. But it did the trick. I put in miles of thread on the new machine, quieted the critic who says, " hmmpf and you call yourself and artist, " made peace with the studio walls and the silence of working on my own, took a stand against multi-tasking. And made something that is, if not beautiful, interesting to look at, and interesting in its process. And nailed the lid on the Botero Library project, too. That little task that no one would have known needed doing, except me.