Keeping Busy

Where does the time go???  I thought it was just a few days ago that I last posted!

Where to begin?

I completed my customers’ three lap quilts, which you can see in my quilt gallery

and this *darling* pink and white 9 patch baby quilt, which she is giving to her new grand-niece.  I quilted it with the Valentine Hearts panto by Gali Design.

 

She promptly brought me two more quilts when she picked those up!  I was thrilled!  It sure is nice when someone likes your work and has confidence in your ability.

I was also able to get another customer’s first lap quilt completed, all in freehand feathers.  I really like how you can see them on the back of the quilt.

I’ve also been working on wrapping up a project to create a website for a law firm in Helena, Jackson, Murdo, & Grant P.C  Disclaimer here, my mom is a partner in the firm, so yes, I do have some affiliation!  It’s been a great learning experience and I am even more interested in the prospect of taking on other customers.

I’ve also been playing with the possibility of a website re-design of my own.  I like a lot of the features I currently have, but the current site design just doesn’t *grab* me!  I have been adding new items to the photo gallery, including my pantograph library, and making the thumbnail images larger, and I want to put my own store back online.

I’ve been investigating additional software packages, too, so I can add more features and take advantage of some new ideas I have…you might say I’m on a software binge!

Most people don’t see any correlation to software, programming, databases or computers to quilting, but I really think they have similar traits.  Some of it is science and some of it’s art, and you take the basic building blocks of what you need and you can come up with some of the most interesting, varied, and unexpected outcomes all starting out with the same pieces.  It’s amazing, it’s creative, and it’s powerful.

No wonder I like them both!

Pink Flannel Quilt

I started this quilt on Christmas break.  It’s a controlled scrappy pattern I found in Quilt Magazine and the minute I saw it, I wanted to make it.  It’s not often that I see a flannel quilt in a magazine, either, but it completely goes along with my goal of working from my stash.  I have plans for at least 2 more of these in flannel, and I might be able to clear out a cupboard!

I’ve been working on customer quilts so I had put it aside, but I had a few minutes last night and finished adding the inner border.  I’m not sure why, but borders are not my favorite step!  I modified the pattern a bit to use a single piece of fabric, rather than piece the border, and I got the flannel at JoAnn Fabrics’ half off sale.

Now that I’m looking at it, though, I’m not sure this border is the right fabric for this quilt, and I’m not exactly sure why.  Maybe it’s not a dark enough pink?  Maybe it just needs a different pink?  Maybe it’s the plaid style design against the squares?  It’s not “bad”, it just doesn’t speak to me.

Of course, I feel compelled to use the fabric, not accumulate more, but I’ll probably have to visit the fabric store this weekend to see if I like anything else better.  Or, maybe I should just go back to the pattern and piece the border.  It’s not like I don’t have a bunch of squares already cut.  Hmm…..

Quilt video–Awesome!

This is well worth the 6 minutes, sit down with a cuppa Joe and enjoy!

Reflections on Family

I’ve been thinking about “family” quilt a lot lately, and the life cycles each of us experience.

Weddings, anniversaries and retirements.  My family has been caught up in all of those things in the last month.

Our family is far flung, with my husband’s family in the Seattle area, my mom in Montana, and my brother in New Hampshire.  I have more cousins than most, and they are all over the place; I can’t even keep track, especially since they are having their own kids now!

My husband and I flew to Seattle to attend the wedding of his youngest daughter a couple of weeks ago.  Even though it was a short trip, I was glad to get back home.  We couldn’t pick up the dogs (my kids!) until late on Sunday and the house sure was quiet without them.

Our wedding anniversary is today.  We spent the weekend together, going out on Saturday night, talking and re-connecting.

I spoke with my mom yesterday afternoon.  She’s getting ready to retire and one of her biggest disappointments is not getting to be near her grandkids, who range in age from 7 to 12.   I suggested that maybe she consider moving near them; they will change drastically over the next 10 years, and this is a time that can’t be lived via video chat.  While there would be some challenges to address, I think she would regret not taking advantage of the opportunity.

Obviously, there has to be personally compelling reason to move across the country than to do it for someone else.  My mother is highly intelligent, well educated, loves gardening and being outside so it’s not like she’s ready to sit back in a rocker waiting for someone to visit.  I’m hoping she would write the novel she’s always wanted to write, incorporating the local history into that story or become a visiting professor in a local college.

She was concerned that I not feel left behind.  I know my mother cares about me, but re-connecting with her grandkids is something that she needs and wants, and that is most important to me.  As I told her, it’s just as expensive to fly from Montana to Boise as it is from Boise to New Hampshire!  And I am OK with video chats!

We mark milestones with celebration and quilts and I’m recognizing those events cycling through my life.  The year is already speeding by, and I want to slow it down to enjoy it to its fullest.