And now for something completely different

We quilters know how this is. You are going along just fine and then you see something and you just HAVE to try it. HAVE TO. Set aside everything else and work on the new thing. Yea. I think it’s a little different than just following the shiny object or being distracted by a squirrel. Well mine recently was the crazy pieced block die by Accuquilt and here we are.

I like small things so of course I got the die for the 6″ block. I will note that it would work splendidly with a layer cake – you can get away with a 9.5″ square but 10″ is more than fine. I used the shuffle method from Buggy Barn Crazies, to mix up the stacks so that I would get the necessary variation in my blocks. (After things are cut, leave stack A as is. Move one piece from stack B to the bottom. Move two pieces from stack C to the bottom. Move three pieces from stack D to the bottom. Proceed in that manner till all the stacks are shuffled). Because it’s an Accuquilt, I had the pieces for 20 blocks cut faster than you can say “look she’s quilting!”.

I wish they had a few more instructions with the die, I’ve done a few stacked crazy quilts before so I understand the general principle but a brand new person would be a bit confused. I do not know if there’s a YouTube tutorial or anything. I might end up making my own as an experiment. I sewed all 20 blocks and assembled them in half a Saturday, and now I have an adorable fall table runner. I have a set of layer cakes that were bought for something that fell through and I know EXACTLY what I am going to do with those now. Cause you know, I need another project.

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When Everything Old is New Again

Well, I’m closing in on two years of posting on this blog almost every single week, and you, my dear readers, have been keeping up with me every step of the way. I am finding myself starting to repeat ideas for topics in my blog posts and it got me to thinking.

I seem to circle around to things in my quilting too. I will figure out a tip or technique and use it for a while on a quilt, then when that project is done, that technique gets set aside too. When the next project surfaces that needs that technique, I feel like I am discovering something new all over again. Maybe that’s one reason that after 30 some years, I am still quilting and still enjoying the process. I don’t ever feel like I’ve learned all there is to learn.

I’ve had a number of people assume that because I lecture and teach, I don’t take classes and I’m not learning new stuff and oh my but that’s far from the truth. I always get a nugget of wisdom out of taking a class, no matter how long I’ve been doing this. There is always something new to learn or at the very least, something old to relearn.

Henry Ford is quoted as saying “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty” and I really do believe that. I also believe that learning is the best mental exercise for keeping the brain in shape too. A brain that doesn’t have to learn, doesn’t have to keep growing.

So, dear reader, please forgive me and indulge me a little if the topics on this blog reappear from time to time; I promise I will write a whole new post, perhaps with a slightly different perspective on the same topic. Sometimes when things happen they are just too good not to share, even if I have talked about it before. Who knows, maybe I’ll have a couple of new readers too who won’t have seen the previous post.

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The Power of Habits

Habits are an interesting beast. They sneak up on us over time. With many habits, we don’t consciously set out to make them, they just happen. As the days pass and as we go about our lives, we set patterns. Like anything in life, habits can become either a force for good or a force for bad, it’s up to us to decide. I think we are all familiar with how difficult it is to change a bad habit.

I read an interesting book last year called Habit Stacking by S. J. Scott. It puts forward the premise that you can build on existing good habits by adding little things to existing routines. You evaluate how you do things, then you start adding to those existing patterns. I’ve tried this method and have had some moderate success in making changes.

The last five months, I’ve been putting down some serious habits. Habits about being at home all the time. Habits about having my weekends not eaten up by outside commitments. I didn’t realize how powerful those habits were becoming. This past week, I drove to Albuquerque to clean out my parents house, and I lost two whole weekends to the process. I feel like the flow in my sewing room has been completely severed. It hasn’t. I know that but it was a pretty big change after being home for 5 months.

I kept saying that I want to keep some of my weekends for sewing when life gets back to some semblance of normal, and August has driven that fact home for me. I’m already looking forward to this weekend, and the list of things I want to work on around here. Time management seems to be even more important now, and I need to incorporate some new habits that support the kind of time management I want to have in my life. The last five months, I’ve been making new habits without having any kind of plan to them. The time has come to be more mindful about those habits and have a plan.

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A Longing for Fall….

I am a cool weather gal. For a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that I am prone to heat stroke. Other than that, most of the things I enjoy in life are compatible with cool or cold weather. I’m thinking a fire in the fireplace, a cozy sweater, a cup of anything hot (cocoa, coffee, you name it), hand knit socks, all of these are things that are not compatible with temps over 95 degrees. I suffer my way through the summer, spending very little time outside, counting the days until fall arrives.

Last week, we had a summer cold front in Texas, which means the temps were in the upper 80s/lower 90s most of the week. Going outside with Pops in the morning, the breeze was cool rather than being a blast of hot air and it was a hit of fall. I know Texas Summers go through at least the end of September, but it was just a brief reminder of cooler weather and a promise of what is right around the corner.

This will be my second fall at the farm and I’m very excited. There will be a back patio this year with a fire pit for sitting outside and roasting marshmallows in the cool evenings. I will be able to step out the back door without stepping into a giant mud pit when it rains. All very exciting things.

At the same time, I’m eyeballing more of my knitting projects. Knitting tends to get put down in my house during the summer for other activities. I just can’t bring myself to knit much when it’s 110 degrees outside. Just doesn’t fit. So I need to figure out where I left off and get things lined up for when cooler weather arrives.

I can just feel the cool breeze on my face and not dread being outside to do yard work.

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What’s in a start?

So a group of friends is working on a quilt pattern (shall remain nameless) and the intro mentions “before commencing, cut 527 1 1/2″ squares”. That gave us a good laugh. Most of us consider that 527 1 1/2″ squares is way past commencing and pretty darned committed to making the pattern, and this got me to thinking about when do you actually ‘start’ a quilt?

I have heard the position that once you buy the pattern, that is considered a UFO. I laughed hysterically when I heard that. A long long time ago, I learned that patterns can go out of print fast, and if I like it, I should buy the pattern now, because in 10 or 15 years when I want to make it, I will have the pattern available. This approach has served me well over the years, but I would be mortified to think about having THOUSANDS of UFOs.

Buying fabric, that’s another step towards making a quilt, but I often buy fabric because I like it, and in the quilting world, a fabric line is rarely available more than 6 months or so, and again, in a couple of years when I actually want it, I won’t be able to get it anymore. We will not delve into a discussion of how big my stash is, but I have been sewing from it extensively since moving out to the farm and have been very pleased to fully piece 3 quilts from my stash exclusively with more in work. If I had to count every fat quarter and every yard of fabric as a UFO, again, we are talking a seriously large number

For me, it comes down to actually cutting into the fabric. Once I start cutting fabric, that signals that I am committed to that design and have made a start on making that quilt. I admit that I have a bin full of strips that are cut because I “started” a quilt and then changed my mind, but someday those strips will come in handy. So cutting is the line of demarcation for me between having a dream and starting a quilt.

I finished up my last hand piecing project a few months ago (it was supposed to be a project on the cruise this year that didn’t happen) and I miss having a hand piecing project going. I have a bin of fabric in the closet that is all 30’s reproductions, some of which I know I got back in 1999, so I’ve had it a while. Some of it was handed off scraps from a friend but since they were 30’s fabrics, they went into the bin. Over the last two weeks, I used up that bin to stamp out 2″ hexagons to piece a fairly large quilt. 588 Hexagons to be exact. Plus 24 half hexagons, plus 46 diamonds to help square up the sides (oh and borders and binding too.). I always wonder to myself if I want to write up my latest design idea as a pattern, and I had a good laugh when I realized I know JUST how to start the pattern: “before commencing, stamp and cut out 588 2″ hexagons”. Yea. I’d say I commenced by the time I had the first 25 cut. I’m looking forward to this quilt, I like 30’s fabrics, but the sight of that empty bin in the studio is pretty gratifying too.

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What One Year Brings

It is coming up on the one year anniversary of moving out to the farm. A whole year. Milestones like this make me look at the passing of time and what all has happened. This time last year I was still frantically packing my house and I had started to move the kitchen myself. This time two years ago I wasn’t sure I was ready to build yet. This time 9 years ago, I wanted to buy property in the country but hadn’t found anything yet.

I have to remind myself often, that the dreams I have don’t come to fruition over night. They have to be tended and worked, sometimes for years, before the big payoff. This has always been difficult for me. I need to see results right away or I get discouraged easily. It is a mark to how big a dream this was, that I stuck with anything for 9 years to the point where things actually happened.

This house and tiny farm is so much more than just a house. This is visible proof to me that I can accomplish things. That even when it seems like nothing is happening, the dream is still viable. That I need to have patience as I go about things in my life.

Last year when I moved in, the back yard was just a vast mud pit. It is not much better this year because I had to regrade the east side of the house so they took a lot of dirt from the back yard, so mud pit yet again. I have had a plan for a back patio since I moved in and I’m finally starting on it. This house is going to be a work in progress for a while I think, I can’t do everything all at once. That’s another good lesson in life, sometimes we can’t do it all at once; have to plan it out and tackle one piece at a time.

August 16, will be a year to the day since I moved. I have a front flower garden, and the yard in the front is mostly green stuff. Not all grass but that’s fine, if it’s green, I mow it anyway. Next year the back yard will be more sorted out and I’ll be on to the next project. Have some ideas for some stuff in the house too. You know, because I don’t have enough to do.

Just keep reminding myself that Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither are my dreams.

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Coming Full Circle

Back in 2005, I was living in Raleigh and was still doing a lot of counted cross stitch. One of the things I found was a little decorative pillow, and there were covers that tied over it, one for each month (Pine Mountain Designs). They were cute and easy to do, so I signed up for the full year. I managed to do January – May and then for whatever reason got side tracked and didn’t finish.

Fast forward to 2018 and I still put out the little pillow January – May and really wanted to finish these out. I searched high and low and it looked to me like the remaining kits had not survived the move from Raleigh back to Dallas and that made me sad. I even considered trying to draft my own little patterns just to complete out the year but I couldn’t come up with anything that I liked.

Now it’s 2020, and I was poking around in the sewing room this weekend and there was a shoebox with a lot of stuff in it and much to my surprise, there was one of these pillow cover kits on the top and it was July. It’s KISMET! I stitched out the little July pillow and felt like there was some closure to the whole thing. Now I have at least January – May plus July.

Yesterday I decided to dig a little bit more and to my complete amazement, the remaining months are all in that box. ALL OF THEM. I will be able to finish out the entire year. I started June last night, and the whole time, all I could think was that they were lost for almost 15 years, and yet they are all there. I am ridiculously happy about this.

I’m so glad I didn’t give up. I’m so glad I didn’t get rid of them. I don’t even remember seeing that shoebox when I was packing the sewing room in the old house, and I don’t remember unpacking that box and looking at what was in it. From my perspective it just materialized in the sewing room over the weekend, fully intact and ready for my hands. To quote The Rolling Stones “You don’t always get what you want, but you get what you need”. Hopefully in a month or two I will be able to post the full set of pillow covers.

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A Word About Quilting

I have been quilting now for a long time. Over 30 years now, and I am finally learning some things about myself in the process. Once the top is pieced, the process of quilting the top, backing and batting together is central to the craft, but that’s where things get interesting for me.

I have a number of friends who actually describe themselves as ‘piecers’ not ‘quilters’ because they spend all their time making tops but they don’t do the quilting part of the process. There are a variety of reasons for this – if you’ve ever tried to shove the fabric and batting of a king size quilt around under the needle of your domestic sewing machine, you know that wrestling pigs in the summertime might be considered easier. Then there’s the question of what pattern to quilt on each quilt. After all the decisions about color and piecing are done, you have to decide how to quilt the project. This is where I am going to make a huge admission about myself: I don’t like custom quilting.

Don’t get me wrong, some of the quilts I see at shows are just breathtaking. (For those not familiar with the process, custom quilting is the process of sewing very specific patterns in very specific locations on the quilt as opposed to just sewing a larger, general pattern all over the surface of the quilt.). In quilt shows, there are awards for the quilting alone and custom quilting can turn a quilt into a work of art, but it is not a process that I enjoy. I need to say that again.

The quilts I make tend to be very heavily pieced. There are not large open areas where custom quilting could really shine. There’s a lot I could do within the piecing I do, but you would have to get very close to the quilt to see that level of detail. The quilts I make also tend to get used around the house. Spending the amount of time it would take to custom quilt a king size quilt (think 30 hours or more instead of 6) just doesn’t seem worth it for something that is going to get crumpled up on the bed regularly.

I have spent a lot of years beating myself up for not being a custom quilter, for not taking the time to make every quilt I produce have a custom designed quilting pattern on it, but no more. I love to piece. I quilt to finish, and I’m tired of having a bunch of tops in boxes because I feel guilty about not custom quilting them. Hello my name is Martha, and I don’t like custom quilting.

I finished my Small World quilt. I did not custom quilt it. It is bound and hanging up in my sewing room and I couldn’t be happier with it. I did not custom quilt it and I think it still looks wonderful, much better than it would look just hanging as a top I pinned to the wall. I am going to keep looking at that as a reminder that it’s ok to finish things the way I want to, so that I actually finish things. It’s ok to not custom quilt.

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So Close on So Many Things

This cover photo is of a quilt called My Small World by Jen Kingwell. I taught this as a class at the shop several years ago. At least 4. I’d have to go look but it’s close to that. I never finished it. I got to the last part of the last section and when I encountered a problem I just stopped.

Thanks to some friends, I got it out over the weekend and finished that last section and put the top together. I know where the problem is, and if a quilter looks really closely at the pattern, then at my quilt, they will know where the problem is too, but to most observers, it’s done and complete. It occurs to me that this quilt is now the embodiment of a very valuable life lesson.

How many times in life have I stopped short because what I was doing wasn’t perfect or didn’t meet the wild expectations I had in my head? I’m afraid to try to count that, because it will be a large number. How many things did I stop because it wasn’t going my way, or I didn’t get it as fast as I thought I would. How many opportunities for success did I pass up because the success didn’t look exactly the way I expected that it would? I almost don’t want to think about it, but I should.

I’m finding a lot of things around the house and in the sewing room where I got to over 90% of the way done and then just stopped. Some of the projects I can look at and I know why I stopped but for the majority it was because I was so overwhelmed by the 90% effort that I didn’t have the 10% left. In my head somehow that last 10% was going to be as taxing as the first 90% is. Irrational, I know but there it is. I need to work on getting myself through that last 10%. There is so much opportunity in that last 10%.

I’m finishing this quilt this weekend and I’m going to hang it in the sewing room. There’s a big wall space that is perfect for it and it is good for me to have the visual reminder of how close I was to something pretty neat before I just stopped. A reminder that the last 10% is worth it. A reminder to dig in my UFOs and see how many other wonderful things are just 10% away from being amazing.

Maybe I’m also 10% away from being amazing?

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My Design Process

I’ve been designing and writing patterns for over 15 years now, and it seems to come in fits and starts. I get ideas and they have to ruminate long enough to become fully formed as a quilt, then it takes longer to write the instructions. I don’t have very few business drivers for patterns, so it comes at its own pace these days.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that I have to have it all in my head before I can write it down, but my process is changing slightly. I now do a few block mock ups to see how it looks in fabric. I joke about the fabric speaking to me, but in a way it really does. It tells me clearly if what I have done meets the idea that is in my head and it tells me what it needs. I’ve learned to listen to that. If the fabric isn’t speaking then I need to put it away until it calls to me.

I’ve been finishing a lot of projects lately. I’ve talked about how out of the ordinary that is for me, I’m a starter, not a finisher. I have been trying to figure out what has changed about my process and the biggest thing I’ve noticed is that I let the project talk to me and tell me what to do. Several of them lately had a very clear idea in mind from the start and all I had to do was put in the work to get them done. Others have sat in boxes for years until I can figure out what they need. That’s ok. I need to be ok with the process that works for me.

It almost sounds like I’m getting more patient as I get older. That would be a complete shock, and I’m positive that doesn’t apply to all aspects of my life, but I am getting more patient with my quilting and I like where that is taking me on my fabric journey.

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