I have a move in my near future and it is time to sort what I have and perhaps get rid of a few things. Today, between the cooking and making great, yummy food I found some time to spend in my sewing room. I sorted a few fabrics, but spent most of the time going through my "crafty junk drawers." Yes, it is plural, I had several. It is easy to see where my priorities are today... in my drawer I found glue sticks, crochet hooks, knitting needles, velcro, various lengths of lace and trim, a few…

My love of quilting has so many different aspects to it. I like to touch the fabric and run my hands across it.Sometimes I am surprised by the smoothness of the cotton and lack of texture, as the pattern can look so real that I almost expect it to feel the way it looks. When I walk into a quilt shop and do this I know that my blood pressure instantly drops.

I am delighted to see all the colors and patterns and how one combined with another can change how it looks. I am wowed and in…

When I first discovered this website, I was thrilled. Wow, people that are like me - that think and breathe quilting. I started posting a blog here now and then and found fun in that too. I could not only plan and start quilts, dream about quilting , but I could also share my thoughts about it too and inspired by what others are creating! I was also in a very productive phase with quilting and completing some projects.

But then, my professional life took a new path and I found myself…

One of my biggest gifts I believe is my imagination. My mind can go a zillion miles a minute and my imagination keeps right up with it. If I had made every quilt that I have ever imagined, I bet I could cover all of the land on the entire globe. I have mentally designed many of my own patterns and then created them, unfortunately in mind only.

On paper I have gone even a step further and put pen to paper and doodled through meetings, church sermons and many moments of just being…

I have another baby quilt ready to be quilted. It is adorable! I love every block, from the appliqued hippo and giraffe, to the pinwheels. I love it every bit as much as all of the others that I have made. In fact, looking at it makes me smile! But for some reason, I am totally avoiding finishing it. I look at it and think,"Wow, this is ready to be quilted and then the binding. After that it can be given to it's intended." 

Funny how instead of finishing it, I picked up handfuls of…

Seeking peace... Open House is over and we had a wonderful time with friends, family and a daughter that is amazing in so many ways. Graduation is tomorrow night and while I don't want to wish it away, I look forward to life getting back to normal. I miss the solitude of my sewing room. I miss hearing my machine whir and touching fabric. A new magazine came the other day and I had to "speed read" through it, as that was all the time I had. Funny to me how much I miss my quilting time. I…

I am finding as I contemplate what to write about in this blog, how often real life intersects with my quilting. I start to write about different aspects of quilting, but whatever is going on in my life, gets told in here as well. Now is an exciting time for our family, as one daughter just graduated from college and the "baby" will graduate from high school in two weeks.

For her, I have a quilt top started that needs to be done, but probably won't be. If I did an all-nighter or put…

When life is crazy, and stressful, and I just need to escape, quilting is the perfect outlet. Today I came home pretty wound up about stuff that happened in the course of my day. My mouth was going full speed ahead reviewing the calamities of the day, when my husband silently handed me a new quilting magazine. I took the magazine thankfully and you know what? I settled right down. The cares of the day and the stress that was coursing through my mind and my body got left…

Quilting is a great hobby for the indecisive. It requires making a myriad of choices and decisions along the way.   Choice number one; the pattern, choice two; the fabric. Of course, usually there is more than one fabric in a project, so you get to choose at least a few more. Should this be bright or understated? Traditional or whimsical? Reds and greens or blue and white? Sometimes it means laying out the blocks in a certain order, so more choices.

When quilting, it can also lead to…

I have started yet another baby quilt. Actually this size is just right for me, as I can do something quite creative, still call it a quilt and also explore and perfect my skills with each one I make. Being that size I can be sure that I will actually be able to finish it in a reasonable time frame.

For this one I started with a jungle print, and then collected fabrics from various places to put it all together. I copied an animal applique pattern from one magazine. A pinwheel pattern…

   We quilters are an interesting bunch! It is funny to me how we love, love, love our projects. At least I love most of mine. I particularly enjoy the planning stage. It will be this fabric and this one, and maybe another color thrown in to the mix, using a particular pattern. These decisions for me usually don't come too easily, I so want it to be just right.

Then comes the cutting out part, which is probably my least favorite part. I seldom can be patient enough to cut it all out…

Have you ever had one of those moments, where something that is not really outside of normal,  really hits you as incredible? It is like that proverbial "light bulb" moment, when you you go, "Wow! This is amazing!" I had that happen just Sunday night when I took my newly completed quilt top (a small wall hanging) and pinned it to the wall to show my family. Some of you may find this a little strange, and to tell you the truth, it kind of gives me goosebumps, but more importantly it gives me…

Quilting is most certainly a strong love of mine. I love the fabric, the colors, the creativity... the time it takes to plan and sew and take it from an idea to being completed. 

Another passionate love that I have, is the love of my pets. Sadly last week, we said goodbye to perhaps the sweetest dog we have ever had. Flash, our 8 year old basset hound, was a 60 lb boy that thought he was a lap dog. He would sit in my lap the second I got home from work. When I would sew, he…

So this is how far I got on my lovely batik project last weekend. I decided one fabric doesn't quite work, so have to decide what to replace it with. I think this will be stunning when done. The weekend is here again and I am home, a little under the weather. Hope to have this top all pieced soon. That is if I can get…

Okay my fellow quilters, here is a project I started from fabric I collected early February on a trip to Madison, Wisconsin. I am going to challenge myself to see how far I can take this by Sunday night! What are you working on? I love the rock-like, swirly fabric! Of course, I love all the other fabrics too. The pattern…

Does your personality come out in your quilting? I am going to start this by saying, "maybe." I know my own, special little quirks certainly do. For instance, my mind goes very fast, some people have said ""it takes a while to catch up with you, you go so fast from one idea to the next."  That is certainly how my quilting goes! I have so many different quilts that inspire me, that I just can't wait to start. I see a fabric and I just want to run with it. And when I sit down at my Bernina,…

I was thinking about what the process is, that gets my brain in gear to think about a new quilting project. Sometimes it is the obvious things, like a new quilt magazine that has a project that I instantly am drawn to. Or going into a shop and falling in love with a beautiful fabric, that seems to speak to me. "Take me and make me into something beautiful!" Or I need to make yet another baby quilt for an expectant friend.

It is those other times that are more random, that take me by…

Several years ago, I was working on yet another quilt top and realized, I really didn't finish very many, if any at all. I asked myself why and I decided it was because I was my own worst critic. I was telling myself that they weren't perfect and therefore not good enough to be completed. The second thing I was telling myself was, I didn't really know how to do that part, so I couldn't finish it....I had never attempted that part before, surely I wouldn't do it right.

Then one weekend…

Anyone that looks through my stash, will immediately know that blue is my favorite color. I have fabrics in sky blue, light blue, dark blue, lots of royal blue (oh how I love the deep royal blues!) and everything in between. When I first started quilting I just bought lots and lots of blue, because I loved it so much. So I thought that was what I needed to buy all of the time.

As I have matured (both in age and in experience as a quilter) my stash has grown to include many other…

As I see headline after headline mourning the loss of another amazing talent (Whitney Houston, in case you haven't heard). As I watch the news that is so horrifically sad of a father, taking his and his children's lives, I can't help but think how sad it is, that these people had nothing to turn that helped them to heal, to move on, and to take a reprieve from their fears and the pressures they felt. They literally couldn't apply the brakes to their habits, their thoughts and ultimately…