Forty Christmas postcards...

I finished up these postcards for the holidays.  Can't wait to send them on their way!  

I've had the worst head cold this week, but I think I've turned the corner. Today I'm attempting to sew little draw string bags for my husband's business.  One of the things he engraves is bracelets and I just haven't found a way to package them pretty.  So I'll try this and see if it is time effective.  Post pictures later!  Hope everyone is having a pleasant- and productive, day!

Maybe it's me...

There comes a moment in your life when you see a pattern.  I'm 51 and I'm beginning to get an inkling that maybe the mess isn't the projects' fault.  It's all me.  

I've been making postcards- for Christmas- and even though they are only 4"x 6" they seem to make a big mess.  I mean, I seem to make a big mess. There's bits of fabric, stabilizer, embellishments, different colors of thread- just stuff.  I keep thinking I need to put it away, but then I get to thinking I probably won't drag it all out again.  What a bother!  I've made about 35 cards and I'm getting close to finishing up.  I need to bind the edges and then I'll be done.  I'll show you a few once I'm at that point.  

Speaking of Christmas... (Is it too early to mention Christmas?  I'm one of those dreaded people who honestly doesn't mind the Christmas carols on the loud speaker of the store even if it's not Thanksgiving yet.  I mean, it's not like there are Thanksgiving songs to play.  I've been listening to Christmas music for a while now.  I figure since I'm working on a Christmas project it would be easier if I get into the spirit.)  Our family is planning on making some new Christmas traditions, this year.  I suppose it isn't a tradition until you've done it a few times.  But I love traditions and I've been having to sacrifice quite a few of mine over the last couple of years.  You see, my husband, William, has an Etsy shop and he really gets slammed with last minute shoppers in December.  I mean slammed.  We pretty much work around the clock and so even if we had time to do the usual, who has the energy or the drive?  

I have been considering a few things.  Opening presents on January 25- catch the after Christmas sales and having extra funds from the successful business month of December. Having our big dinner that day. Still opening stockings on December 25th. Still fix a big brunch that morning.  We usually visit the tree lot the Sunday after Thanksgiving, but this year we're going to get an small artificial tree (making all of the ornaments) and then go and cut down a big live tree on the first day of winter- the 21st.  Plan out cookie baking days, fruit cake making day, postcard addressing day, a couple of quiet evenings with candle light and reading (Eva's request) - anything festive I can think of to fill December and January- ahead of time and decorate the house until it's the gaudiest thing you've ever seen. We have an extra month after all. Do you have a beloved Christmas tradition I could incorporate?  

Making December even more hectic, we're expecting a new grandson on Christmas day.  So we'll need to keep all of our plans flexible. Considering the cause, I'm fine with that! 

A pillow it is...

Decided to go with the pillow option for my little tea towel. The cost of the towel was 99 cents. The red ruffled fabric was scraps from someone else's scrap bag.  The fluffy filling was left over high loft batting from a customer's quilt.  So the full cost of this project was less than a dollar.  My bed has a yellow and red quilt on it- and I have blue bedroom walls- so I look forward to seeing what it looks like in there.  

But, first, I need to make my bed.  I've heard that making your bed every morning makes you a better person.  Usually, my feet hit the floor running and I don't take the time before I jump into "Life." I'll flip the quilts up, but rarely get to the whole making the bed until later in the day- if at all.  Definitely have room for character development.

And lookee there!  I've been looking everywhere for that bobbin holder and there it is in the top left hand corner of the picture!  Eureka! 

Martha Washington Star...

Ya just can't beat a traditional quilt block.  There's all kinds new fangled ways of cutting and whacking and sewing fabric together, but sometimes you need to go back to the beginning. One of my favorite books is Judy Hopkin's Around The Block.  It has 200 blocks, each in 6 different sizes.  I've been working on a sampler from this book for years- I think at least 10.  All from my hand dyed fabric.  I'm not sure about the setting- I keep sewing and throwing them in a bin. I think it has potential to be a stunner.  I hope.

I sewed this block for my son, John.  He has a sweetheart in Georgia and is planning a visit in a couple weeks.  He made the frame for her mom, whose favorite color is red, and asked me to make a quilt block for it. Isn't that frame fantastic?  John is one of those people who can do anything.  He showed me a log and said he was going to make a picture frame from it.  I was skeptical, but as I've learned with John, he's capable of accomplishing just about everything he sets his mind to. If I had a spare inch of space on my walls I'd be hinting about a Xmas gift.  He helped me choose the colors and I left extra fabric on the quilt block so that he can trim off the excess once he gets it set in the frame like he wants. The block is 6".

So I put some beans and the end of a ham in the crockpot last night before I went to bed.  I love cooking things overnight, but there's one problem.  I never sleep well.  The smell keeps waking me up and it takes me a few seconds to distinguish exactly what it is.  Then I drift back to sleep only to be awoken shortly with the same question in my mind, "What is that?" But it's for a good cause and now that I'm awake, it smells good- not mysterious!

I bought those bins and they fit under the cutting table perfectly.  Which may not be a good thing because I now realize that if I bought more bins... they'd fit, too.       

Functional...

That's the best I can say about it.  So I sorted and compiled and collated. Threw a lot away. The floor needs swept. The windows washed. It still needs a lot of help, but at least I can sew in here if I want to.  Which I do.  You should have heard me talking to myself:  " You only need so many scraps of fabric."  "Honestly, you won't miss it." "It's for the better good."  I'm not sure that I was very convincing.  I'm still glancing at that trashcan like it's some sort of cinnamon bun. 

(The bag of batting and the trash bag beneath are a client's quilt.  I've had it for two weeks and have barely done more than glance into it.  Squares and triangles. There's a king-size batting.  I hope she just got the biggest size they had and that the quilt isn't actually that big.  There seems to be two backings... one flannel and one muslin.  I'm not sure what that means.  I really need to roll up my sleeves and dive into that. But the organizing comes first.) 

There are several stacks of fabric without a home. I bought two medium size bins, today, and I think they will fit under the cutting table.  It has diagonal bars under there that makes it tricky to store things.  We'll see.

Oh, and look at that linen towel on the table.  I bought it at a thrift store and, for some odd reason, I just love it.  I'm guessing it's from the 50's. I have no idea about what to do with it.  I don't dare use it as a towel, do I?  I can ruin a towel faster than anyone I know.  Of course, there are 6 men in the house and a couple of them are grease monkeys.  So, it's not all me. But I'd like to do something to display it.  It's folded in half so the back is the same as the front. I thought about making a tote bag out of it, but half of the picture would be lost in seam allowances. Any suggestions?  Maybe a pillow. For my bed as, again, the residents here are not necessarily appreciative of pretty things wishing to stay pretty. Still thinking.   

See? 

Is there any reason why I'm not getting a lot of sewing done these days?  Actually, I am, amazingly, sewing.  Just on the dining room table. My section of the quilting room also doubles as a guest room.  Kids came home for the weekend. Folding down the bed takes up valuable space and everything gets shuffled around with my sewing table taking the brunt of it. ("brunt" is a weird word- just sayin')  It's a problem.  So I move my sewing machines to the dining room table and proceed to make a mess out there.  Then, we need to eat and the mess moves on.  Reminds me of some episode of Star Trek where there's some sort of dark shadowy entity roaming, menacing, through the passageways of the spaceship. 

I have a hard time thinking clearly once the clutter reaches a certain level.  Don't get me wrong, living in a house with 10 other people necessitates clutter.  And I'm OK with that.  I once read that "Clutter is life lived out in the open."  That suits my personality, really.  Out in the open. But there comes a point when there is just a little too much life living out there in the house.  So, I guess what I am doing right now is talking myself into sorting and getting rid of some of my life clutter. Honestly, if you don't even know you have it, can you really miss it if it goes away?  Oh my goodness, everything becomes a metaphor in my mind these days.  But life can be like that. 

So, I'm going to tackle some clutter, today. I think I'll start at the end and work my way back. 

All of us are patched together.  Pieces from different experiences.  Different interactions with different people.  None of us are whole.  As any quilter will tell you, that's a very good thing.  

I have rarely met anyone who has a color-coordinated soul. By that, I mean, it seems like it would be a rare thing for a person to have variations of experiences in their lives that all harmonize with each other. Life is a scrap quilt type of endeavor. No one is able to, exclusively, choose what colors or patterns go into their quilt.  There is a sense where we can decide what and who we will interact with. But usually, life happens and we take what comes. Some things are inescapable.  Don't like orange?  Tough luck, some orange got in there. 

One of the really neat things about quilting and life is that we do get to choose what things we want to focus on. We get to choose how they are arranged in our lives. Don't like orange?  We can chop it up into smaller, less significant pieces and they'll hardly be noticeable.  They'll actually compliment the other colors in our quilt.  And maybe we have this one beautiful piece of fabric that we want to have as a focus piece. It's our quilt and we can arrange the pieces as we see fit.  Put that beautiful fabric in the center where we can enjoy it. We can obsess about that orange fabric- maybe negative things that have happened- or we can choose to minimize them and appreciate that beautiful fabric. 

My nephew was just handed the most hideous of all fabrics.  And it's a huge piece.  His two week old daughter died suddenly and unexpectedly.  What does one do with that?  Do we really want to chop it up and scatter it among the other pieces?  We might not have a choice about that.  I'm open to suggestions as to what is to be done with this ugly fabric.  It's center stage right now, but all of us quilters know, the seam ripper is a useful and necessary tool. At some later date we can move it away from the middle of the quilt. Her short life is represented by a beautiful piece of fabric, but it's struggling for attention. Her death is represented by a truly ugly fabric, but I hope that it will fade some with use. Become less overpowering to the overall beauty of the quilt.  

Every life and every quilt is unique. Some are fancier than others. Some have a utilitarian beauty to them.  An appreciation can be felt for them in that the maker used what he had to it's best advantage.  I've seen some quilts made from some pretty ugly fabric and I loved them.  By the same token, I've seen quilts made from lovely fabrics that have just lacked that special something to make it truly beautiful. What kind of quilt are you making?  Does it have holes where you tried to rip out the undesirable fabrics?  Experiences and people who enter our lives can't be removed once they have passed through. Maybe we can choose to not add any more of that particular pattern to the mix. But once they've made their way in, they're in.  Are we finding peace with the ugly bits? Are we just turning out the lights and refusing to look at it?  Do we find pleasure in the process?