Welcome to Saturday Quilting Bring & Share 🙂 I hope you have time this weekend to bring along a project, join in with this virtual sewing group and share in the conversations we’ve picked up from the worldwide quilting community this week. Do use the comments box at the end of this post to share what you are doing and anything that has caught your interest.
On Thursday I shared my battle with the January Blues. I woke up on Friday feeling more positive (a lesson in ‘it is good to share’ and my thanks for the encouraging and helpful comments left for me here on the blog and my Facebook page). As an antidote to the rather gloomy blue I shall now share some pretty, vibrant pink.
A lively collection of pink, green and white on my kitchen windowsill. So pleased to see the larger orchid flowering again and the smaller orchid also has a flower spike. The hyacinths were a pre-Christmas gift, they flowered over the festive weeks and then surprised me by providing a second set of flowers 🙂 The bouquet was a gift from friends who joined us for Sunday lunch last week.
I have been struck down with a mild case of the January Blues. Anyone else finding motivation levels running low? I guess I am asking this question of those of you, who like myself, live in the Northern Hemisphere – to all of you in the South I hope you are making the most of the long hours of daylight and warm temperatures 🙂
I know many could be a little envious of my stay-at-home lifestyle (and with good reason): spending my time at home, choosing to do things when and how I want! This stay-at-home lifestyle does have it’s own small challenges though. I do not have what would be called a ‘dynamic personality’ or, in Jane Austen speak, ‘a lively disposition’. A lot of my mental energy is therefore employed in keeping myself motivated – I’m very good at envisaging results, not so good at seeing the ideas into action and through to said results.
Last week I was filling planners, nailing down goals and taking action…. This week the desire to curl up on the sofa and watch a box set from beginning to end is very real. I confess I nipped into HMV and bought the first seven series of Cold Feet (over the past 36 hours I’ve watched the first three episodes! – that’s not much of binge really is it?).
Thank goodness for the responsibilities I have and the opportunities given me to contribute to events that have got me out the house (that is another of the challenges of being a stay-at-home person – so many possibilities, which to say ‘yes’ to, to which to say ‘no’?).
Anyway, I have done some creative stuff this week, here is the photographic evidence:
On Monday I helped run the monthly Craft Group at Church. A creative member of the Group kindly demonstrated making these pretty tissue paper flowers and shared a Debbie Shore method of making fabric flowers. These are my creations 🙂
And today I have been pattern testing again – making the second skill building block for the Quilt Club workshop. I’m particularly pleased with this block and it was satisfying to make use of fabrics pulled out of my scrap boxes.
Having written this post, I realise I am tired (poor me!) there has been a fair bit of running around between creating these things and maybe I need to get better at acknowledging those ‘extras’ and feel less guilty about succumbing to sofa time 😀 Maybe…? Funny how I imagine every one else is managing their time so well, staying motivated, being so much more productive and ‘alive’ than myself!
Snowdrops flowering in my garden – a promise of longer days and Spring to come 🙂
Time to shake off the January Blues… Be thankful, and look for a quick project that makes my creative heart sing 🙂
Welcome to Saturday Quilting Bring & Share. An opportunity to bring along your current project to a virtual sewing day and share in conversations circulating around the quilty world. You are very welcome to share your links in the comments section at the bottom of the page and I hope you will find the blog post conversations introduced on this page of interest (it always gives me a thrill when I see that readers of these Quilt & Share post have clicked on links to explore more of what’s being shared in the online quilty community 🙂 ).
My focus project this week has been to finish the covers for the storage trolleys. The idea being that the covers will hide the drawers filled with notions and fabrics and soften the rather clinical looking metallic top of the trolleys. The covered trolleys then take on their second role of bedside tables when my sewing room is transformed into our guest room 🙂
For the quilting I chose a cream coloured 40wt Aurifil thread No. 2000.
You may know of Sandra Walker’s ‘Dreami’s’? She defines Dreamis as the projects that catch us unawares, demanding we ‘Drop Everything and Make It’! When Sandra first described this phenomenon and began the monthly Dreami link up I was right with her! My sewing room is littered with drop-everything-and-make-it projects! Indeed I have ‘project master lists’ (written with the express idea of keeping me on track with existing projects) that have more unplanned projects penciled in at the bottom than there are projects neatly composed in printer ink at the the top!
In the past two months I have embarked on two Dreami projects. On Sunday I began a third… I spotted Jenny Doan’s latest on-line tutorial featuring a Christmas tree quilt. I thought, ‘I could make that to hang in the sewing room/guestroom!’.
