Scrap Quilt for Quilt Show

I started a small quilt a few months ago to have something to work on at the sit and sew.  This was a small, lap-size quilt that I made from scrap material in my fabric stash.  The pattern of the pieced blocks is sometimes called Bird in the Air.  Not everyone saw it that way.  While I was making the blocks everyone looked at them and said that the blocks looked like fish. 

When it came time to choose fabric for the stripes, I chose blue, a water color, so that it might actually have some connection to fish.  This choice was also aided by the challenge quilt that I blogged about last Sunday.  The blue color in that quilt closely resembled the paint chip color for the challenge, Jamaica Bay.  I expected the quilt to resemble a school of brightly colored  fish swimming in  azure tropical waters.  I don't really see it myself, but a lot of people do.  And, for people familiar with the block by name, Bird in the Air, the blue color still works as blue sky.

A member of my Guild asked me if I would put the quilt in a quilt show that will be here in September.  I said that I would.  Now the challenge is to finish quilting it in time for the show.  I have to have a photo of my quilt and my application in by the first of August, only two weeks away.  I hand quilt, so it is a case of drop everything and work on this quilt.  Of course that means that I am not working on my Star and Leaf quilt.  I want to have that one completed to enter in the State Fair of Virginia this year.  That show is a little later in the year.  Or more specifically, the date that I will have to have the quilt finished is later in the year.  At this point, about half the small quilt has been quilted.  Those blocks are only four inch (10.16 cm.) blocks.  About a third of the Star and Leaf quilt has been quilted.  The latter quilt takes a lot longer because they are 12 inch blocks (30.48 cm).

Of course, working on these two quilts means that  I probably won't get the Flamenco doll started in time for the fair this year.  I am not sure that I could finish that project in time even if I started now and devoted all my free time to it.  I have so many projects in mind, and so little time to do them. 
I just keep telling myself that this is only a hobby and that there is no part stressing on when things get finished.  I like to challenge myself in competition, but I really enjoy just making things more.  If I have something to put into a competition great, but I do not want it to be the driving force behind my creativity.  Forcing myself for deadlines is probably the greatest killer of my desire to create.  I may put off the doll this winter.  Then I will have something to to put into the handmade doll competition at the fair in 2018.