Blogging-- or can it just be my online journal?

If you've had a blog for over 8 years, then you may remember that wonderful time around 2010 of quilt blogging.. when there was such a positive energy floating around, just as the modern quilt guild movement got started (notice I didn't capitalize the guild, back then it was just a really good idea).  Many bloggers who experienced that time have lamented over the years that blogging has changed, the community is gone, it's just not the same... and it's true.  I'm sure blog posts have been written on it, this doesn't need to be another one.  I do miss that era.  But I also miss my own early days of blogging, back in 2006, when I was reading a whole bunch of really awesome craft and home blogs and I wanted to write!  I wanted to say something and see if anybody out there would read it.  And they did...
But in the beginning, it was mostly for me.  To track my projects.  To sort out my thoughts on trends and process.  To record my journey.  That's what I want to do again.

Because-- I'm not in the thick of quilt industry stuff anymore. It was fun to be on the fringe for a while, to know people and watch my friends become successful.  But my life has changed, as things do.  I'm still on my journey, it just doesn't look like theirs anymore.  It has always been mine and I have always written from my unique perspective, but I think the intent is different.  I think this space can be useful to me now.

Over New Years I put up a design wall.  Rich said to me, "It's not your place until you put up a design wall."  Now that's the truth.

It is for him.  He is important to me.
We make quilts for people when they are important to us.  To strengthen that connection and to spend time focusing on it.  It's a good way to spend time.

I don't know what other quilts I want to make.  I would like to finish up old projects and let them move on.  To become useful.  My closets are full and I need to make space.  My goal for 2018 is to finish 10 quilts.  Not start and finish, just finish.  I have jotted a list in my paper journal, it's not at 10 yet, but we'll see where the year takes me.

Now I'm working on just these two.. the string pieced crossroads (I know this block has a name, but I have forgotten it) and Travel Quilt 4, from my last post.  Still sorting out a functional sewing space in the new apartment.. I have a lot of multi-use spaces so I can't keep projects out for any length of time.  Oh!  I also bordered and basted Travel Quilt #5!  So I'll also need to find somewhere to set up the Janome so I can put some lines of machine quilting into it.   Here's a teaser shot for anyone who missed it on instagram.  One side of the border went on a bit warped, I noticed while basting, but I'll work with it.  I am so so happy this top is done.  There's a lot of my life in this quilt and I'm looking forward to revisiting it as I quilt and bind.

My birthday weekend

So.  I turned 37 on Monday.

And the last week has been full of reflective thoughts, perhaps more so than other years.
I was very careful to plan out how to spend my time this weekend-- I have always been one to want/crave/and ask for alone time on my birthday.  I just need it.  It's my treat to myself-- that time to really reconnect, to sift through my thoughts, take stock of where I'm at, and ground myself in my reality.

With two years of midlife crisis behind me, I think I'm doing ok.

I spent most of the weekend with the guy I've been seeing (who needs to make an appearance here on the blog soon.. he's tall.  I need him to hold up some quilts for me) but I did take a jaunt into Manhattan on Saturday to get to the NYC Metro Mod Guild meeting.  It was my first time going in .. maybe 18 months?  Felt so good to be around quilty friends and beautiful making.

 I stitched on the train ride in, of course.  This blue and yellow block has fabrics from the quilt I made with George this year.  This hex-diamond is almost done.

I am grateful that the internet lets me make and keep friends, even when we only see each other sporadically.  I think that's one of the things I missed most about blogging.  Facebook is great for quick daily updates, feeling connected but not really being connected.  Instagram is better because you are seeing through your friends' eyes.  But blogging.. photos, words, feelings, all the thoughts and dreams put behind the post.  Some of my friends are simply amazing writers and I love getting to know them *that* way, through their writing. 

Bernadette has been working on her blue hexies quilt for a long time.. I'm so happy to see her determined to finish it.  I promised to help with the binding when she's ready

Nellie somehow managed to have a baby, finish this quilt, and get to the meeting to show it off.  I love the light colored crosses in the border.

This one is Lisa's and.. she's giving it away.  Who knows why we do the things we do?  But that kid sure is lucky..

Following Margaret on Instagram is such a treat, but seeing this quilt in real life and hearing her thoughts on making it (especially how she embroidered, rather than hand quilted) was really awesome.  Guild meetings, man.  Always something to learn.  

And Maureen from my library group was there too!  Working on impossibly small EPP, of course.  THAT is not my fault.

After the meeting, I went for coffee with my new friend, Kyle, then wandered across town to one of my favorite places in the city, Kinokuniya.  I could spend hours there, wandering like I used to do in Daimaru or Tokyu Hands, when I lived in Japan (at the turn of the century!).  So much to look at, take in, ponder and enjoy.  I did have a train to catch, so I made a beeline for stationary downstairs..

I was hoping to find a rooster stamp to add to my Zodiac rubber stamp collection, which I started in 2000.  Unfortunately I was told they were on order and I should check back in a few weeks.  I guess that's another excuse to make the trip then, huh?  I was able to replenish my collection of awesome pens, and now that I think if it, I should really write a post on pens because I do have strong feelings about them.. and oddly enough, my tastes have changed over the years.   (mental note: blog post about pens).

Monday I baked a cake and had Christa and her son over to help us celebrate.  The kids and I planned ahead this year and while at Party City before Halloween, we picked up these Dory candies for my cake.  Yup, 37 with a Finding Dory themed birthday cake.  I love being a mom, because you get to be a kid and make the rules at the same time.  Cake was tasty.  I plan on eating leftovers while writing Christmas cards later tonight.. 

Many thanks for the birthday wishes that came via FB and instagram (and for the dear friends who actually got me presents!!  I feel so loved).  If you want to comment below with what you were doing on your 37th birthday, or what you think your life might be like then, if you aren't as old as me.  I can honestly say, 5 years ago I had no idea that this is where I'd be.. but I'm happy I made it and I like where (and who) I am at 37.   Hope I will always be able to say that. 

The contents of my TQ#5 sewing kit

Started in February 2014.. in a few short months, this WIP will be 3 years old.  The sewing kit has been the same all along (I think?), and it has collected a few odd bits and memories.  I was noticing the other night, as I planned out the last few diamonds and edge pieces, that so much has changed in that time.  So many friends and experiences.  Their stories are in the quilt, which I'll tell again once it's done (aiming to have the top together by Feb 2017), but the kit.. I didn't realize so many memories would be held in this little plastic box too.

This is everything just kinda thrown out of the case.  Pic is from my design wall sometime last winter, before I moved the bed to the opposite wall and had to take down the batting.  (I ended up stringing lights from the command hooks I left up).  More of it has been pieced together than is shown in the pic, but I'll do a separate post for TQ#5 progress soon. 

 In order to sneak time to take all these photos, I let Jack count and arrange all the loose hexies in the kit.  Most were cut with my Fiskars 1" punch during or after our road trip to Chicago in May 2014.

 This is one of the mini flyers I made for the Saturday Stitches library program I did at the beginning of the year (these are 2016 dates, NOT 2017). On the back there are names and phone numbers of people that attended, who wanted to be added to our mailing list.  I miss my Saturday Stitches group!
The green paperclip is a German one from when I was living in Athens the spring I was working on the EPP book.  So many hours of EPP that year!  New paperclips were one way to keep my motivation up.

These spools are the threads that match the current blocks I'm working on.   I know in the book I talk about keeping small bobbins in lots of colors, but that hasn't happened in this travel quilt kit.  I'm able to get by with mostly neutrals, and then when there is a specific need, I do keep that color on a spool.  I think part of the difference is that the blocks are larger (25 hexies, compared to the 6 diamonds in TQ#2 and #3) and that I just don't have the same chunks of time to sit and sew these days.  Most of the time I'll be home again to change out thread before I need a new color.  The yellow hexies are from the backing on the quilt George and I made this year (another blog post, I promise!).  And these might just be the folding scissors that I got from Grama K..   I had a pair of these as a kid, is it possible this is the same pair??

This will be the top right corner of the patchwork.  I got the red floral fabric while I was at the Sisters Outdoor Quilt show in July 2015.  I knew when I tucked it into my bag that day that it would make it into this quilt.  Didn't know it would take over a year to get there..

And these two little trinkets may be the most special-- The bottle top pin cushion that my friend Eri gave me.  I have spend a lot of time thinking about her this year, I'm pretty sure she watches me stitch sometimes.
The black pin box came from Shannon years ago, in a big box of scraps (she used to send me some every few months.. what an enabler!).  Sometimes friendships take breaks, but this is one that has withstood the tests of time.  I should call though..

And my helper, holding my thimble.  Don't know why, but it's his favorite notion.  This is the same thimble I've used since.. 2006?  My tools are just as important as the quilts themselves.  It's all part of the process.   Do you have anything special hiding in your sewing kits?

Monday Morning Star Count, August 17, 2015

Sometimes life gets a little... life-y.
And all you can do is move forward.  Do what needs to be done.  You cling to the things that you know because there is so much all of the sudden that you don't know.
Last week I got a message from a very dear quilting friend that she was in the hospital.  Cancer.
It was my first time ever getting that call directly.  I was unprepared for my emotional reaction.  There was shock, and a need to be present for her.  So I did what I knew how to do-- I picked up my sewing kit and drove to the hospital..

She'll be in for a while.  Some infections delayed the chemo treatment but finally things got underway and seem to be doing well in the initial stages.  I can't say too much here, to protect her privacy, though she did say I can blog about our hospital room sit and sew sessions.  She even took a pic of me for this blog post..

I'm just plugging away at Travel Quilt #5.  I joined the sections that were left flapping and started  in on more small sashing strips so I can get another chunk of diamonds together.  I'm off to the hospital again tonight for a visit so if the lighting is good, we'll piece some more.  Piece calm.  Piece quiet.  Enjoy each other's company.

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Monday Morning Star Count, August 10, 2015

One lonely side filler piece.

That's all I managed last week.  Sometimes projects speed forward at a quick step, other times they inch along, one inch hexie at a time.

I like this little side unit.  I cut 3 castle towers from a scrap of Lizzy House, left over from the back of TQ#2.  The yellow was a scrap I salvaged from a bin at my workshop with Sarah Fielke in Sisters (now there's a blog post I should write..).  Small but powerful, this unit.  Good memories in there.

What have you done?
(I also made, um, and entire quilt top in a weekend, just about.  Watch for that post later today)
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Monday Morning Star Count, August 3, 2015

Ooh, I didn't schedule this post ahead of time and now it's Monday afternoon.  No worries though, I have done MORE than enough piecing this week to make up for it.
Just look at these...

These are all the hexies I have freed by joining more units and more sashing strips.  BTW, next time I say, "Oh, I'll just add sashing to my EPP project" someone shake some sense into me.  The progress here is sooo deceiving.  The units get done, but the assembly just takes forever.  I am absolutely loving the look though.

In other news, today is the last day of my summer break and tomorrow I'll head back to work and my sanity saving routine of 10 minutes of EPP per day (not the 2+ hours I must have put in every day the last week).  Small progress, big smiles.
What have you accomplished since last post?

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Monday Morning Star Count, July 27, 2015

Travel Quilt #5 got a lot of attention this week..
I've been home with the kids for the last bit of my summer break so I stitched at the library, in the yard as Jack played play-doh, on the couch with George as he played games on my tablet... (my phone was never around to take action shots though)
And by the weekend, I was ready to stitch two large sections together.

I made enough sashing strips to go along a diagonal row of hex-diamonds so I attached that to the smaller section first before joining the row to the bottom segment of the quilt top.  I didn't want the weight of the sections to pull too much as I was stitching so I lined up my hexies and joined the segments from the middle, working my way to either end.

I have laid out the remainder of the top row a hundred times but never get around to piecing it to the strip.. I decided this weekend just to join what I had so I could free up templates and not worry so much about color placement decisions (what comes after the brown hex-diamond has changed several times.. most recently I want to use a purple unit which isn't actually pieced yet...)

 I like how it looks so far.  I have a stack of completed hex-diamond units (sorry, didn't count them before the post) but they all seem to have a very similarly toned outer ring.. I think this bottom corner is so colorful, and then the rest are going to be low volume/white prints?  Yes, I'm getting frustrated with this a little.  I want to make progress but it's slow.  The units are easy enough to get done, but the sashing and assembly keeps tripping me up.  Didn't trip Jack though, he had a great time spinning around on it during my photo shoot.

I'm sure there will be much more time for EPP this week.  What were you able to get done since last time?  Show us!!

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Monday Morning Star Count, July 20, 2015

I had such and amazing time at the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show last weekend...  It was super cool to finally be there and to see my quilts on display all over town.

Travel Quilts #2 and #3 were hanging and they looked so... intricate from across the street or down the block.  I guess I forget that I stitched them from 1.5" diamonds?  

I had 3 other quilts in the show too, maybe I'll post about them later, I want to keep the focus on EPP today.  Of course I found some time to work on Travel Quilt #6 that weekend:

and got in a bit of stitching on TQ#5 during the car ride too:

I'm back home in NY now, but omg, I am SO in love with Oregon.  The quilt shops, people!  The quilt shops alone are reason enough to buy plane tix and rearrange your schedules to get out there.  And I didn't even make it to that many (4 maybe?).  It was enough, though.  I came home with an extra suitcase (I had to carry the 5 quilts...) and probably around 20 yards of fabric.  Quilting heaven, I'm telling ya...

I have cut up a bunch of new fabric for hex-diamonds and I hope to get some stitching done throughout the rest of the summer.  I'm also working on some big machine pieced projects though, so I've got to balance my time.  Yesterday it was just plain too hot to quilt.. maybe this week I can convince the kids to hang out at the public library for a while (or anywhere else with free air conditioning?).

Now it's your turn.  Who has been making progress on their EPP this week?
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Monday Morning Star Count, June 22nd

I sewed all weekend!  but only a tiny bit of it was EPP.  I hung out with Christa one evening and basted a lot, but my only piecing was getting these two together.

I thought a lot about EPP though and put in an order at http://www.paperpieces.com/ for some new-to-me shapes and some fussy cutting templates.  When they arrive I'll share more pics and info about my summer stitching plans...

For now, it's your turn.  Please show off more progress than I did, and if you can't, give us a good reason!  I have  no guilt or shame, I finished quilting the taupe spiderweb borders, made and attached binding and started stitching it down.  I also pieced my Sunshine and Shadows from the 2015 New Years scrappylogcabin quilt along (check out my instagram feed for lots and lots of pics).  I added in some crumb piecing and hand print blocks, it came out really scrappy and wonderful.  It's a riot of color.  More pics when it's quilted (or basted, or half quilted.. again, it's easier to post to IG as I'm sewing than to stop and write a full blog post.).

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Monday Morning Star Count Revival

I keep doing EPP.
I try to stop.
I even got a job and a bunch of other time consuming responsibilities to help break the habit, but...

I can't.

So I'm reviving the Star Count.  Once a month didn't work for me.  I need you guys every week. Like Amanda Jean posted on Friday, the accountability that the link up provides is really strong (and comforting in some ways too)

I've started basting and piecing everyday as part of a meditation practice.  It's really amazing how much clearer my mind gets after just 10 minutes of silent EPP.

Of course if you only sew for 10 minutes a day, progress is slow, but it adds up.  I've been making my way through a few hexi-diamonds and a lot of black sashing strips.

Is anybody out there to play along?  I miss you guys!

Here's the Linky!!

Monday Morning Star Count, April 2015

Hi guys.  Anybody here?  Want to post links to your English paper piecing progress?
Here you go:



I have been cutting and plotting away on Travel Quilt #5, and keeping it with me to stitch in all sorts of stolen minutes the past month.  The best was the afternoon I spent piecing with Eri at Panera.. 3 blissful hours of conversation and EPP.

(doh, can't get this one to load horizontally!)

I hope you all were so lucky~

Monday Morning Star Count 2015/7

Ah, blogging..
You used to be such a big part of my life.  But now, I don't have time to read or write blog posts.  So you sit, like a neglected journal, as I sew and post pictures almost daily to instagram.

I have thought many times over the last few weeks of blogposts I'd like to write, and I hope one day to tell you the stories behind all the quilts I'm making (3 huge projects are getting all my attention these days).  I want to keep this space for those stories, because they belong here.  But right now my heart is in the sewing, the creating, the living through fabric and quilts.  Just let me say that much and when the words come, I will put them here.

About the Star Count though..
I can't keep up with every week, but I do want it to be predictable enough for you guys to set personal goals for stitching.. let's give once a month a try.  Starting today, the first Monday of the month, I'll post a linky.  Please link up, we'll have so much more to see.

Here's the state of Travel Quilt #5.  I didn't work on it this week, but I thought about it a lot..

If you have any EPP projects in the works, please link to photos and stories of them below:

Monday Morning Star Count 2015/6

Snow day, third Monday in a row.  Thanks 2015, this is a treat.
Today the local schools are open but my (far away) school is closed.  I am home with Jack though, toddler with a fever.  He's cheerful though.  Maybe he'll help me sew later.

This weekend we had another meeting of the Saturday Stitches at Rockville Center Library (twice a month, everyone is welcome!).  I took advantage of the table space and laid out Travel Quilt #5.  Not much has changed.  I completed the brown edged diamond a while back, but I still feel like my diamonds are too similarly-colored on the outer rings to be able to make any conclusive decisions on block placement.  Hmm.  I'll keep working on the black sashing hexies until inspiration strikes, you know how it goes.

Do you have any stitching progress to share?  Please link up English Paper Piecing projects in any stage (basting, piecing, quilting, cuddling) and tell us how your projects are progressing.  Blogs, flickr, instagram.. We'll be happy to pop over and encourage you to keep going this week~

Monday Morning Star Count 2015/2

I did something rather special this week.  Something I haven't done in a long time.
I got on a plane by myself.  No kids.  And I sewed.


Travel Quilt #5 is steadily growing.  Diamond #18 and part of 19, and lots of pieced sashing hexies.

Your turn~