Pause

May 18, 2015June 30, 201510 Comments

Take a moment to pause.

It’s hard for me to pause. I’m in a hurry to get things done and the faster the better. But, I slow down when I hand quilt. The news is that quilters are slowing down.

Why?

Quilting Daily says it’s because the quilting frenzy of tools and fabric and social media posts are stressing us out.

One of my Book Bee participants (where we’re exploring Savor Each Stitch: Studio Quilting with Mindful Design ) sent me the above post. In it, the author writes:

Mindful creating, or paying close attention to what you’re doing. how you are doing it, and the materials you’re using, can help you regain the “Zen” of your favorite pastime. Not to mention how much better your results will be.

The author cites Mark Lipinski’s Slow Stitching Movement as an example of this approach. When I explored his blog, it was overwhelming. I couldn’t decide where to go first, so I just quit looking. That’s a good place to start. Just stop looking!

And, for my exploration of the chapter in Savor Each Stich, “Contrast,” I’m hand quilting my quilt. (featured photo above)

I love hand quilting. Over the last year I’ve made more than 3 million stitches on my machine trying to improve my free motion quilting. It worked. I got a lot done, but it’s time to pause and take a break from that. I’m going to take my time and not stress about my “to do list.” I’m going to pause and savor each stitch.

Pausing,

Wanda

Random Perfection

May 5, 2015June 30, 201513 Comments

Birds fly.

Over the Rainbow, why then, oh why can’t I?

If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why oh why can’t I?

—Over the Rainbow, Lyric by E.Y. Harburg, Music by Harold Arlen

One of my goals for 2015 was to finish my yellow hexagon applique quilt. The yellow hexagons led me to thinking about The Wizard of Oz musical which I saw last summer and the song, Over the Rainbow. I took the words and used hexagons as musical notes.

I hand appliqued the “notes” and added green and orange hexagons to my rainbow. I machine stitched them using the method I saw on Modern Handcraft.

I added orange for the binding and it looked fabulous.

Then I washed it!

I noticed that sides of the appliques were not stitched down and were coming out. This was caused by the way I folded the hexies. See in this photo the way the fabric was folded straight down. The stitching across the point of the hexagon did not catch the fabric. Some of the fabric caught and some didn’t.

I fixed some of them. But, man, what a chore.

I’m looking at it and wondering, “why can’t I just embrace this?”

I took off all the hexies which weren’t nailed down — 303 hexies to be exact.

And, I loved the outcome:

I would not have placed these hexies in this configuration, but it feels better than the pre-washed quilt. That’s Random Perfection.

Finding home in the random,

Wanda

Changing Themes

April 29, 2015June 30, 20153 Comments

I’ve been considering changing my blog theme for awhile. I preferred a full width template that would make it easier to share tips and tutorials. I found the Sela theme.

Overall I like having categories at the top of the blog. I like the clean white/gray background. The new theme cut off sections of my featured images throughout my blog, though. I took that into consideration when I chose these orchids for the featured photo of this post.

I just started exploring this theme –maybe I should have done that before I switched to the new theme. There’s no going back now!

I can’t decide if I want a “front page” static page. If you have any tips on navigating themes on wordpress, I’d love to hear from you.

Wanda