Saturday

I'm propped up in bed with a quilt and my favorite patchwork pillow today, enjoying the warm sunshine that's streaming through the windows. My youngest and I were hit hard by a flu bug yesterday, and while she's young enough that her energy is already coming back in droves this morning, I'm feeling weak and wobbly and perfectly content to curl up in bed with my laptop and books when I'm not sleeping. My favorite mix of jazz/swing/blues/big band music is playing beside me on my phone. Click here if you'd like to listen to my playlist too on Google Play Music -- I'm happy to share it with you. While I'm too tired to dance, it's awfully hard to keep still when Ray Charles is singing "Hallelujah, I Love Her So." There are so many memories on this playlist. I used to listen to "Moonlight Serenade" on my favorite Glenn Miller album while working in the office at my part time children's director job at my church during college, and I remember singing along with Frank Sinatra's "Sweet Lorraine" in the mornings on the way to my fifth grade classroom when I got my first teaching job. James and I took swing dancing lessons just for fun back when we were engaged, where we usually found ourselves dancing to "More" by Bobby Darin, which seemed to be a favorite tune for the instructors. And "At Last" by Etta James has always been our special song. So there's a lot more in this music than just melodies for me.

I'm finally making some progress on one of my longstanding reading goals: to make it all the way through the 3-volume The Civil War: a Narrative by Shelby Foote. That's almost 3,000 pages worth of history, and I'm only on page 323, but for a girl like me who loves American history, it's fascinating. Foote has a remarkable way of including little details that really make these people and events come alive, and it's nice to spend an afternoon getting lost in the past for a while.

Last October at Quilt Market, my friend Joanna Burgarino, the editor of Quilts & More magazine, interviewed me for the American Patchwork & Quilting podcast. Joanna was the technical editor on my first book, and she's one of the nicest people you'll ever meet. It was so much fun to get to spend this time with her, and I hope you'll enjoy it. You can listen to Episode #459 right here (our chat begins around 22:31) online.

The photo above is a project I started earlier this week, a cheater panel that I purchased from my favorite shop, Sunny Day Supply, which I'm quilting by hand. It's just the sort of slow, simple project I've been wanting to work on for so long, and I love picking it up whenever I get the urge.

Well, I think another nap may be calling my name, so I'd better close up the laptop for now. Hope you're all having a beautiful weekend, friends!

Finding the Fun Again

Yesterday was the first day of spring and, as it so happens, the last day of our spring break this year. We took a few extra days off after our annual week of vacation because my sister's family drove out from California to spend some time with us. Being together is always such a treat, especially for our daughters. I had all five of them in my minivan yesterday afternoon as we went on a special "cousins shopping trip," and it was so much fun. It's amazing to me to see how quickly they're all growing up into beautiful young women.

As I was driving my girls home last night, we were listening to the soundtrack for the Curious George movie which was such a big hit with them so many summers ago when they were little. Just hearing the music took me instantly back to a dozen vivid memories -- seeing them scamper around the vegetable garden with their Daddy, helping them swim in their little plastic pool on the patio in the afternoons, watching cartoons with them in the evening as the smell of warm grapes drifted in the back door from the arbor outside, tucking them and all their stuffed friends into their toddler beds at night.

I remember it all like it was yesterday.

Back then I would clean up after dinner and then get my machine out on the dining room table so that I could get in a little bit of sewing before bedtime. It was such a challenge back then to get any time to sew, and I treasured every chance I had to do it. So much of what I made was for the girls -- play quilts, floor pillows, book bags. All of it was well used and well loved. I was cleaning out our guest room the other day and found a whole stack of those little quilts in a wire basket, too small for my growing girls now but full of memories from when they were just the right size.

I can't escape the fact that, in many ways, I was having a lot more fun with my sewing back then. It was always exciting to look for the next project I had never tried. Fabric collections were fewer, and fabric designers were like rock stars. I remember counting the days until the release of Nursery Versery by Heather Ross (where the mouse print from her current Trixie line made it's debut), Hello Pilgrim by Lizzy House, and anything from Melody Miller's early Ruby Star years. Blogs were still newish, and there were so many sew alongs and swaps back then, all of them administered by chatty, happy Flickr groups. I remember large groups of us sewing through entire books like Zakka Style by Rashida Coleman-Hale and Patchwork, Please! by Ayumi Takahashi. (Does anybody even do that sort of thing anymore? Do any of us have the time to do it??) Working through these books in online communities wasn't just about doing what was popular, but it was also about learning new things with other people who enjoyed it as much as you did.

It wasn't that long ago, really, but those days seem so innocent and naive to me now. Somewhere along the line things changed...or maybe I changed. It's the tradeoff you make with turning your hobby into a business. You get so many opportunities to do amazing things, but that inevitably leads to more deadlines and less time to play. Trying to balance your creative work time with your creative play time, and then figuring out how to balance all of that with your family time -- it's a tightrope I walk every day. Even now as I write this post, I'm trying to alternate between typing and being a guest at my youngest daughter's imaginary diner, where she's serving cardboard blueberry pancakes and rubber chicken. Yes, I'm running short on time this afternoon. Yes, I'd like to get this up on the blog before I have to take the car to the dealer for maintenance. But how many more years will she be willing to put on an apron and serve me plastic food? Some things are too important to wait.

So one of my goals for 2019 is to find the fun again. When it comes to creativity, I want to be able to work hard and play hard. This month I'm looking to one of my most inspiring friends to help me get back on track with that. The unbelievably talented Mary of Sunny Day Supply is running a just-for-fun log cabin sew along on Instagram starting next week. It's not too fussy -- any kind of project featuring any kind of log cabin block will do -- and it will be a wonderful chance to get out my fabric and play. I decided to start early, making a little courthouse steps block that finished at 6" square. It's scrappy and playful and quilted entirely by hand. I added a bit of black and white gingham to the back and turned it into a tiny pillow. Not, of course, because I need another pillow, but because just looking at this little bit of handmade joy makes me so happy that I almost want to cry. I'll be putting it up on a shelf where I can see it every day, reminding myself to find my way back to where I began in this hobby that I love so much...

Liberty Spool Runner

I was thrilled to pieces when I heard that Riley Blake Designs was going to be the U.S. distributor for Liberty of London quilting weight cotton. I've long been a fan of Liberty's gorgeous designs, and getting the chance to work with their new Hesketh House collection was such a treat.

These prints have all the beautiful details of their famous lawn with all the durability of quilting cotton. It's a quilter's dream!

Because I wanted to showcase as many prints as I could in a table runner, I decided to do a very basic small spool block. Each spool has a different fabric as the thread, and then I used a black floral print for the spool ends to tie it all together.

The piece is hand quilted in white Valdani Perle Cotton -- my first attempt with this thread, and it was such a pleasure to use. Hand quilting always adds so much lovely texture and personality, I think. A white solid works nicely for both the background and the binding so that all the focus is on those sweet spools.

This was one of those projects where finishing is almost bittersweet. I'm so glad to see it done, but I'm really going to miss working on it every night...

Slow Sewing: the Uppercase Quilt

Back when Janine Vangool, publisher of Uppercase magazine as well as a line of superb books all written "for the creative and the curious," first introduced her second collection with Windham Fabrics, I was taken with the mix of prints. The line (officially titled Uppercase: Dots, Dashes, and Diamonds) seemed just as much at home among modern designs as they were in my collection of vintage reproductions. She was kind enough to have a bundle of fabric sent to me in order to make what I originally intended to be another version of my Big Bear Cabin Quilt. I've learned over the years, though, that plans change, and sometimes the fabric takes you in a new direction. I had no idea that this project was going to alter my entire approach to quilting.

When I started this quilt, I was coming to the end of the crazy schedule that always happens before Quilt Market in the spring and fall. I had been churning out projects for different fabric companies as well as sewing up samples with my own first fabric collection, Five & Dime. It was enjoyable work but stressful, as it always is when you're trying to make a lot of different things of as high a quality as you can manage while still meeting all your deadlines. By the time I picked up the stack of Uppercase fabric, I was riding the raw edge of burnout, feeling physically drained and creatively exhausted. Suddenly I craved nothing more than simplicity, a project that would be crafted with care over time.

I scrapped the Big Bear Cabin pattern in favor of starting a log cabin block in one corner of the quilt and building it out to the opposite edge, placing the prints in color order and alternating between darker and lighter fabrics. After basting the quilt, I spent a month of evenings hand quilting along each of the rows in black thread. Once that was finished, I framed it all in binding made from a black print peppered with tiny white diamonds.

This was by far the largest quilt I have ever quilted entirely by hand, and it was the first time I've hand stitched the binding on the back of a quilt in at least four years. With the simple design and hand quilting, it looks as if I could have just pulled it out of a trunk full of vintage quilts. It feels so different from any quilt I've made before, and I really believe it all lies in the fact that I made this piece slowly by hand over a long stretch of time.

There's something almost mystical that happens when you hand quilt a project for weeks on end. It becomes part of you in a way that a quick project or even a machine quilted project just can't quite equal. You enjoy the hand stitching at first and then after a while it grows a bit tedious and perhaps even challenging but you keep going. And the more you sew those even stitches along the rows over and over again, the more of your heart goes into it. The tedium remarkably transforms itself back into enjoyment, and what seemed like monotony becomes a peaceful sort of contentment. Life happens around you while you're sewing, and that becomes a part of the quilt too. You have conversations with people and you watch favorite movies and you think...you think a lot. It becomes a part of your day that you look forward to, that quiet meditation with your hands that also quiets your heart. And the day comes when you sew those last few stitches and you feel a strange mixture of joy and sadness. It's so wonderful to have it done, but you'll miss it somehow, these nights with this particular quilt in your hands.

I've been a champion for small, quick sewing projects for a long time now. I love sewing little things that can be made in an afternoon or weekend. But over time, I've watched myself neglect some of the projects that I wanted to make because my schedule was too full of commitments to projects that I had to make. There is a danger sometimes, I think, for us to turn handmade pursuits into our own version of a sweatshop. We produce item after item as quickly as we can, needing fresh material for our blogs or our social media accounts. We feel compelled to accept every invitation that comes our way for fear of offending someone or missing out on an opportunity that we'll later regret passing by. Yet I'm reminded again how important it is to have priorities, to make peace with the fact that sometimes I will have to say "no," to set aside time for projects that have no other purpose than to bring me joy -- especially the slow sewing and hand quilting which I've been too busy to attempt for too long.

My Uppercase quilt will always be a reminder to me that the journey of making is just as important as the finished creation. And I'm truly eager to begin my next adventure in the days ahead.

The Floss Quilt

It all started with a charm pack of Carkai by Carolyn Friedlander for Robert Kaufman Fabrics. I saw that gorgeous spectrum of color spread across my cutting table, and then my eyes drifted to a wooden spool of Aurifil floss in the tool cart nearby.

And suddenly I knew I had to make this quilt.

This is by far the most "modern" project I've attempted in quite a while. I modeled my spools completely on the tall, thin Aurifloss wooden version -- these are exactly twice the size of the original -- using about half of the Carkai charm pack for my "thread" colors. I couldn't resist adding an empty spool in there for fun. I used Quilter's Linen for the spool ends and an off-white shade of Kona solid for most of the background, tossing in some of the low volume prints from Carkai for more depth and interest. I love how one of the Carkai prints next to the brown spool had a line of the same color in it, so that it looks like a bit of thread is coming off that spool.

Of course, I had to quilt this one by hand using creamy white Aurifloss, adding three rows of stitches between each horizontal row and one between every vertical row of spools. It was a joy to sit by the window at the end of our loft and sew by hand on this little quilt all afternoon. For my binding, I used a white crosshatch print from Architextures and included a spectrum of all the "thread" colors along the top left side of the quilt, leaving a gap for the empty spool. If you look closely, you'll see that missing "thread" color on the bottom right side of the quilt binding.

This was one of those project ideas that hits you like lightening out of the blue. It's the kind that you just suddenly have to make -- and can't stop working on during every free moment you have until it's finished. And when you're done, you step back and look at it and it just seems like a gift that caught you by surprise, that was sent to you when you had no idea it was coming.

But you're so glad it did.

Sweet Tweets Blog Hop

My enormously talented friend Erin of Why Not Sew has written a darling book called Sweet Tweets: Simple Stitches, Whimsical Birds, and I'm so happy to be a part of her book tour today. These pages are full of adorable little projects featuring vintage style patchwork and Erin's beloved little free-motion applique birds. For today's post, I chose to make the Birds & Bees Hot Pad since it featured the hand sewn hexagons that I love to stitch. I pulled lots of favorite new prints for this piece, including many designs from the Spring Cotton + Steel collections.

Though I didn't have the materials on hand to do the applique in the corners of the pad as the instructions called for, I decided to use the petal templates as a guide for some hand quilting with red Aurifloss thread. I absolutely adore the way it turned out. With a little navy binding to frame the edges, it makes a beautiful giant mug rug for the nightstand by my bed. I can't tell you how much I love seeing it there every day!

Erin's book is full of fun small projects, just perfect for the instant gratification sewing that I try to fit into each week. I love how personal each one is, and I especially admire the way she works so many special touches into each piece like optional crocheted borders and the tiniest pieces of patchwork. I will definitely be working from this book again!

You can follow the rest of the tour according to the schedule below, and if you'd like to win an e-copy of Sweet Tweets for yourself, please leave a comment on this post. I'll choose a winner by Friday! 

Tuesday, Sept.8 - Erin (Introduction post) Why Not Sew?

Wednesday, Sept.9 - Heidi Fabric Mutt

Thursday, Sept.10 - Debbie A Quilter's Table

Friday, Sept.11 - No Post

Saturday, Sept.12 - Jacque Brown Dog Prims

Monday, Sept.14 - Amy nanaCompany

Tuesday, Sept.15 - Svetlana s.o.t.a.k handmade

Wednesday, Sept.16 - Renee Sewn With Grace

Thursday, Sept.17 - Martingale Stitch This! The Martingale Blog

Friday, Sept.18 - Heather Vintage Grey Handmade

Saturday, Sept.19 - Clara and Jennie Clover & Violet 

Monday, Sept.21 - Amanda Jean Crazy Mom Quilts

Tuesday, Sept.22 - Cindy Live a Colorful Life

Wednesday, Sept.23 - Carla Grace and Favour

Thursday, Sept.24 - Mary Molly Flanders

Friday, Sept.25 - No Post

Saturday, Sept.26 - Erin, Big Giveaway Post!!! Why Not Sew? 

***THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED! Congratulations, Margaret!***

The Square Box

Every now and then I get to test a pattern for a friend, and it's always such an honor. My friend Amber has been turning out a series of unbelievably clever little boxes that are sewn completely by hand using English Paper Piecing methods. I got the chance to test out her new Square Box last week, and I absolutely love how it turned out.

My version is slightly smaller than the original pattern, finishing at just 7" square, but it's still very roomy. I didn't have fusible Pellon 71F on hand, but I made do with Pellon Peltex 70 and some adhesive basting spray which worked quite nicely. The combination of firm interfacing, hand sewing, and linen fabrics makes this an incredibly sturdy little box. I can tell that it's going to hold up well with use.

I've been needing a bigger container to hold my button collection, which had outgrown the little tin pail I was using. This box not only gives me plenty of space, but it looks just plain adorable sitting on the shelf in my sewing room. Visit Amber's pattern store on Craftsy to make one of your own!

Confessions of a Kindle Convert

I always seem to be the last one to jump on a new trend. It's not that I have anything against progress, mind you. Most of the time my reasons are either financial or motivational -- a nice way of saying that I can be a cheap stick-in-the-mud unless we're talking about something near and dear to my heart like fabric. So when the first e-readers hit the market a few years back, I wasn't interested. Nothing could tempt me to choose that little screen over holding a real book in my hands.

It's taken me a while, but after letting my husband talk me into getting one for my last birthday, I've found that there's room in my life for a Kindle. I've only bought a few e-books so far, but I must admit that it's incredible to be able to click that purchase button and instantly have them ready to read. It also works wonderfully for big books which are just plain exhausting to lug around with you everywhere. I'm finally getting past the first hundred pages in Shelby Foote's massive Civil War trilogy -- which I've started and given up on at least half a dozen times over the years -- and it's just as fascinating as I knew it would be.

Of course, a new electronic device means a new case, and I had so much fun sewing a little sleeve for my Kindle. I went with a patchwork log cabin design, using prints from some of my very favorite designers. This time I decided to hand quilt instead of using my machine, even adding two french knots at the center of those flowers on Ayumi's adorable teapot. The case is backed in brown linen and lined with a Paris map print. I finished it off with a leather button and hair elastic for the closure. It's simple and sweet...just the way I like it.

So for those of you who've been holding out like I was, give in. Get yourself an e-reader. You don't have to use it for everything, but it's pretty great for a lot of things.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to 1861...