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When a good quilt goes bad...too be continued

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You do your best to raise them right; you give them love, attention. You carefully follow the best advice of books and friends. You set them up for success. But something has gone wrong. I mean, sometimes best intentions just don't play well with the world. Usually, the problem is right back at the beginning - I chose the wrong fabric somewhere in the process. (I do not claim to be a master of colour theory, and sometimes I get too confident with "it'll be fine!"). Sometimes, the pattern just doesn't come out the way I expected, and while it was promising, when I go to lay out the blocks, it just isn't working. I have a quilt right now that has been relegated to the UFO pile (UnFinished Object) for over a year. The pattern is beautiful. My execution - less so. The pattern is "Tile Style" by Cheryl Malkowski of Cheryl Rose Creations. I love it. However, my colour selection does not. And I should say, I've had people tell me that they rea...
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It's not hoarding, it's curating

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It's not hoarding, it's curating. My buttons, beads, trinkets, and little crochet pieces completed while watching TV; they are important! They are waiting for their project. They all have special boxes and tins - including a very old Maxwell House coffee tin of my Great Grandmother's, filled with her buttons. There is a wooden box with ribbons, lace, and special buttons I find. And then there is the photo box filled with little crochet pieces, waiting for their proper home. Why curate (again, CURATE, not hoard) these baubles? Because they are all waiting for their proper project. These baubles often look misplaced, unfit, or uninteresting. Or sometimes, they are exactly the opposite: they are weird, eccentric and distracting. Remember that Island of Forgotten Toys in that old Rudolph movie? Ya, like that. But buttons. When they find their project, they help the project sing, and they have found their home. I pull out my boxes and tins, and start look...
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A Newbie’s Journey to Paper Piecing in 10 steps

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A Newbie’s Journey to Paper Piecing in 10 Steps *(Not another tutorial)  "To Sawyer's Bay" 1. Make a New Years Resolution to learn this elusive skill  I’ve done it time and time again: seen that beautiful pattern, with the seemingly impossible piecing, and then opened it only to wince at those damning words, “Foundation Paper Pieced”. This will be the year. 2018! I will learn to paper piece. Having never followed through with a New Year’s Resolution in the past, but ever the optimist, I set out to learn how to do this. 2. Scour the Internet. Oh the Internet, the fountain of information. There is tutorial, after tutorial, after tutorial. Uh oh, why are they all a little different. Carol Doak uses a special paper, this fancy “add a quarter” ruler and an iron; she has special tape for when you rip your block, and cardboard for folding. That's a lot of stuff. Angela Walters uses a seam roller instead of an iron; but wait, Violet Craft just uses normal...
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An Octopus' Treasure - The Value of A Story

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I love octopuses. Have you ever seen videos of them just hanging out in the deep ocean, just doing their octopus thing? They are great. So I wanted to make an EPIC octopus to give homage to all the cool little octopus I see when I watch the EV Nautilus  YouTube videos. But when I went to start this project I had a problem. I really didn't like my last project. I made a wall hanging with some otters on it, and throughout the whole project, I wasn't happy with how it was going. The otters I made were fine , but I didn't ever get that bubbly, excited, joy that I usually look for in a project. I ended up with a cute wall hanging, which has been tucked away for the time being until I find a home for it. So when I started undertaking this octopus, I had some trepidation. What if I couldn't find the flow that I look for when I'm creating; and more importantly, what was missing in the last project? Where does the innate human joy that comes from making reside, ...
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