We have an expression in our house that we use to describe those nights when you can’t sleep because your head is whirling with ideas. We call it “busy brain.”

I’ve never been able to decide whether I like busy brain or not.

I love busy brain when I’m neck-deep working on a book and find myself with my toes on the edge of a metaphorical cliff because I need to decide “what happens next.” And then somewhere in that swirl, a really good idea pops up.

The problem is, a night of busy brain often leads to an almost hangover-like condition the next day because I am ssooo sleepy.

I have busy-brain episodes about other things as well, such as quilting ideas. You can see the results of one of those quilt-brain nights here when I thought it would be fun to use the same pattern to create a different quilt for each season—summer, fall, winter, spring.

The only problem is finding the time to fulfill the brainstorms that strike at midnight. In this case, it was about three years between the creation of the top of the spring quilt to the sewing the sleeve on the back of my summer quilt last night so all four of them can hang in my guild’s quilt show this weekend.