I do not like embroidery

I stink at it. My stitches are rotten. It's not fun. It's tedious.

So why am I currently *obsessed*?
















































Both of these are Rosalie Quinlan designs. :-) I'm thinking that some of this obsession is her fault - I love her stuff THAT much.

Pictures and not a thousand words

I sewed something yesterday, because I wanted to, something for ME - and I love it! Okay, it's really only half a something - I need to dye more fabric before I can finish:



We went to visit babies on Sunday, finally - it seems like forever since we saw them last! Here's our pretty girl:



Here's our sweet boy with his grandpa:




And contrary to popular opinion, yes, he CAN hold his own bottle. Maybe it would be easier for him if it weren't such a goofy shape, but who am I to argue with modern technology?


These two are like my two were at this age in one way - they are as different as two children can be. I think our AlyssaBean is the wild child, and Mr. Adam is going to be Very Serious. We just can't get enough of them! :-)

relationship advice to noone

I've been feeling very sad lately because some people who are near and dear to me are going through a tough time in their relationship. And I really don't like to give advice. And this isn't really advice, this is just something I need to say. Don't know if the right people are ever going to read this or not, but maybe someone somewhere will sometime, and it will make sense to them.

DH and I, between us, have been in some amazingly rotten relationships over the years. We've been married for six years, four months, and one day now (not that anyone's counting), and people make fun of us because we still act like newlyweds. Now that I've found my Mr. Wonderful, there's something that I understand that I don't think I understood before:

I love this man more than anyone else I've ever loved. He is an absolute treasure, the most wonderful gift, the Best Thing Ever. So I treat him like that, or at least do my best to. How do you treat your fancy car? Your expensive jewelry? Your prize rosebush? You love on it, you pamper it, you take out the trash for it, you bring it coffee in the morning, whatever. You treat it like GOLD because it is. And he treats me like a treasure, too. Because he loves me best, and so he shows it every single minute that we are together.

If you love someone, show it. Treat them like the gift they are. Love is meant to be given, not taken. Look at that person that you love, and do anything you can, right now, to make them happy. It will make YOU feel good, too. :-)

Baby quilt and deep thoughts

People who know me in real life (which is probably the majority of people who read this, all three of you) probably know that I’ve been in a real funk the last few months. Or maybe they don’t know – it’s been pointed out to me several times in the last few days that I’m hard to read. And I know for a fact that I do hide some things well. I think it came from years and years of living in a truly rotten pathetic excuse for a marriage and doing everything possible to hide that fact from the world. Which I did, clearly, as so many people were so taken by surprise when the marriage ended.

But I digress.

It’s been over three months since my shoulder surgery. People who have had the same surgery and the doctors and PT people know how long the recovery from this thing is. And I'm really pleased with the recovery I’ve made so far. I’m back to swimming; I have most of my range of motion back; I’m mostly off painkillers (but nowhere near out of pain). For the two months before the surgery, I was in constant excruciating pain, too. And yes, I did slow down, but no, I didn’t take all the time I should have for my recovery, and yes, I’m back to running full tilt and pushing myself too hard. Throw in the ongoing saga with my baby boy, and I think I’ve got lots of good reasons for being in – and staying in – a real funk for so long. But I think that I’m beginning to see my way out of it now, and it wasn’t at all what I thought.

I’ve been needing to SEW.

For so many years, I’ve been really hooked on quilting. Obviously, to the point where I turned it into my business, sort of. Since opening the shop, I’ve almost entirely stopped doing my own creative work, mostly because I’m always working on something for the shop and there are only so many hours in the day. If project A will make me money and project B will only bring me joy, well, let’s face it – any hope I have of having more than fifty cents to my name when it comes to retirement is tied up in the shop. I need to work on the project that might make money. Even before my surgery, I was feeling frustrated that I wasn’t doing any of my own creative work, but I’m definitely past that now, at least for a while. Funny how not being able to do ANY sewing will get you over your lack of creativity.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been easing back into sewing. You might think that I would have been able to sew long before now, but it’s surprisingly fatiguing. Not to mention that I’ve been working at close to my normal pace, which is exhausting to both me and my shoulder, so there’s been nothing left of me at the end of the day. But I’ve been slowly getting back to it. Last week I finished the top for my grandson’s baby quilt (since he’s due August 5, I had to finish!). And then I finished off a couple of shop samples that were in progress.

The last few days, I’ve been coming home from work and FORCING myself to sew. Shop samples again, this time the quilt for this year’s Tour de Quilt in October. And I’m finding that the more I am back to sewing, the less miserable and unhappy a person I am. My dear family – I mean immediate family, DH and my two kids – have known how unhappy I’ve been lately, and they love me anyway. The rest of the world has been getting an act (mostly a pretty good one, I think). I’m hoping that I’m really in a place now where I can start to crawl out from under it again and get some balance back in my life.

Balance. That’s so much what it’s all about for me, and I’m SO incredibly out of balance. Maybe now, after sewing again for a few days, a little less out of balance. I hope so; maybe this will be the beginning of the rest of the recovery.

Finishing is still an F word

I've been working with a personal organizer to get my studio into proper shape. That means going through EVERYTHING in here and sort, purging, etc. One of the things we're going is putting all my "projects" in separate boxes, and then she's going to have me make a list of all theses projects and set some kind of rules for myself about finishing. Honestly, some of these things are ridiculous - within an hour of being finished. I'm not sure I totally agree with her plan, though, when we come upon a piece of fabric and I say "I was going to make a skirt out of that," she calls it a "project." I could just put it on my fabric shelves, and then I wouldn't have so many "projects." I jokingly said to her - as we were piling projects to the ceiling - that anything I didn't finish by the end of the year, she should come and take away, and she replied that she'd be there! I don't think she was joking, so now I'm a little nervous.

But honestly, how can I in good conscience start anything new when I've got all this STUFF? Some of it I've already purged, throwing it away or donating it to Q4R. I think I may post some of it here (or maybe on the shop blog) as a giveaway (I need some readers to be able to have a giveaway, therefore the shop blog might do better).

This week, I finished two porjects that were almost there. The first is a piece I started in a class with Teri Austin four(?) years ago. All it needed was the binding! I even had the binding cut out and everything! Okay, so it still doesn't have a label or a sleeve, but at least it's bound:

The second is a pillow. This is really pathetic - the top was done, the cording was covered and sewn on, all I needed to do was make the back pieces (I do the bit that overlaps in the back, no zipper) and sew it all together. The picture is the pillow flat on my chair, since we're out of the right size pillow forms at the shop. The top is pieces of nu-suede, right side and wrong side, wrinkle, whatever, all free-motion quilted. It's not great, but I like it:

























I also sewed together a top for a shop sample - no picture yet as I still need to do borders. And the blocks for my grandson's baby quilt are all pieced. Now I need to put them on the design wall and sew them together. :-)

It's nice to be sewing again. I need to finish the studio organizing. I had thought I'd work on it this afternoon, but instead I'm running away to the beach for an overnight getaway with DH. NOTHING I'd rather do than be with my honey!

Good news!

I finally got a letter from my baby boy today. I didn't know if they'd allow him to write in this weirdo "we control your kid and you don't get to see him for thirty days" place, but he did. And he says he's okay, that it's nowhere near as bad as he expected. He's reading and drawing a lot, and those are good things.

This is one seriously relieved Mama here. :-)

Finally - some show and tell!

The baby girl and I took some self portraits yesterday: