Not that I am, consciously, at least. Afraid.
I jumped right in when I got home from my trip and made those great Friendship Star blocks. Got three packages sent this morning; among which were the 6" block swap and the other Handmade Gift swap.
After coming home, there was so much to do, that not knowing where to start seemed to block me from getting much of anything done.
I had promised my #3 Granddaughter to make and send recipe templates to her other Grandmother, as well as fill some out myself. That took me time to find and print what I liked. I did find four templates, then went out and bought some tabs and a 3-ring binder for her new family cookbook. I know she'll love it.
The next project I want to work on is the BOM that my local quilting friend & I just started. I am doing mine in B&W and so laid out the strips and pieces of scraps. This BOM is not coming out as one per month but is a bit more frequent and somewhat random. My friend is working on #2 and I want to cut #4 & #5 out this weekend. We are meeting on Wednesday to talk about how its working & share our results. HOWEVER, this is as far as I got. Laid out on my ironing board and going no where tonight.
Its not fear of quilting that holds me up. I believe that quilting is worth doing and that belief helps create the quilts I make.
I am bone weary from the trip. Weary into my heart for having to leave the darlings in my life who live 2000 miles away from me; Weary also from my thoughts that resist the changes in who they are, who I am; and more, Weary from what I saw in the environment as I flew across the country.
Its so big, change. Even when we fail to notice the gradual ones in the mirrors or the obvious ones during droughts or floods. And although I know that I am responsible for my part, for my small part in the world, I also know I have a part to play.
All risks or changes do not end in devastation or losses.
That's what those little rippers are to a quilter. Whether we are quilters or just living in this great big, beautiful World, we have built-in abilities to do it over, to try again, to keep going, and to pick up the myriad of pieces, making something really wonderful from them. THIS is one of the best reasons I know to quilt.
Its not about fear. Not really.
What a profound opportunity for this month's 6" swap. My June partner requested hers in Kaffee Fassett-like fabric with yellow and done in either the Double Windmill or the Friendship Star.
Friendship Star. Here is the link to the pattern I found. Friendship-Star . I went to one of the stores in town to find the fabric line, which they do not carry, so bought a solid yellow & a print that seemed to work. I made the two for the swap by reversing the solid with the pattern. It made me think about the friendships I have as well as those simple ones made through the various swaps.
On my visit back to the Midwest, I spent time with family of course, but also with some of the friends I have back in the Twin Cities. Some of them I've known for decades now, and the quilting swap friends are all pretty recent.
Friendship evolves for most of us over time. I remember enjoying that phrase that says we have friends for 'a reason, a season, or for our lifetime', and that is still true for me.
I think I pull in relationships with people who share my values. These are the ones I laugh with, cry with, think with and even find sacred spaces with. People who think I am eccentric or too loud or just not like them tend to leave. And honestly, I can find myself wondering why I stay with folks who are different from me too.
Things that don't matter to me so much is who they sleep with, what they eat or how much money they have. What does matter to me is if they are kind, if they have a positive outlook on life and if they want to keep evolving.
With the new quilting or fabric friends I am making through the swaps, what matters to me is their commitment to their work, and if they 'ship on time'. A plus to those friendships is what I learn from them about their work.
For instance, I asked my June 6" block swap partner what she planned to do with the blocks she received. She showed me a picture of some of the blocks laid out on point over a piece of fabric she may use as sashing. It gave me an idea what she's received, and also about her creative juices for this work. I could see how my blocks might fit with the others, and then felt ok with the fabric and color choices I made.
Through this all, I know I want to up my game as a friend. I've been thinking how this would play out and the first thing I want to increase is my generosity. Oh sure, I am a generous person. My parents taught me this, and we come from a nationality where people are generous beyond belief. So how does this work?
Well, I think we live in a culture right now where more people are scared of running out of material resources and operate under a scarcity mentality.
Not so with folks I know. Folks I know open their homes, give freely of their resources and share what they have, all of what they have. I do that too. But I want to do more. I want to be more generous, and surprise myself with sharing. I have already begun to think and to plan, and to give.
I started thinking about the circles of people I surround myself with. In the first circle are members of my family and close friends. The 2nd circle is made up of folks that could be acquaintances or people I meet or know but are not involved in my life. The 3rd circle is the rest of the world. Its easy to give to people I know, and also to people in the 3rd circle who are people I don't know, such as making a comfort quilt for kids in a hospital or for a fundraiser. Its that 2nd circle of folks that I think are people I have overlooked or neglected. These are the ones I want to think about more.
My two weeks away were a wonderful experience seeing some family and friends. I learned a lot while I was back in the Midwest, and one thing that came to me was about transparency. Transparency meaning authenticity. This is something I want to cultivate in myself, in my life, and in fact, all aspects of my life including this blog. More about that to come.
Of course I stopped at a local fabric store and bought this amazing piece by Hoffman called "Woodsy Winter" with complementary pieces for borders, charm squares and binding. (Scarlet-Silver, and Silver Ice Dots. The wood slices fabric didn't have a pattern name.)
It will be a quilt I make for myself because of both the Cardinals flying on it and the birch trees...both of which I love and are so Minnesota. There are still travel wrinkles on the main piece and I might not get to it right away, but just love the look. The shop clerk was just pulling the packing wrappers from it. The piece is a vertical pattern and I would HATE to fussy cut it so have a pattern that will work perfectly.
Also waiting in the mail were two of the June Swaps. This first one is my 12" Christmas block swap from Rev. Traci in NC who made these two lovely Card Trick Blocks. My friend Rex sent me a link from You Tube Quilt as you Go that I think I will use for this quilt that has so many styles for each of the blocks.
My other swap was from Rina who is in MO and was not feeling well the last few weeks. She sent a dear family member/friend out shopping for her and also made the little pic for getting into the corners a quilter / seamstress needs to turn. What a treasure of fabrics! And I know I will use everything she sent.
Home. It felt good to sleep in my own bed last night and to wake up to coffee in a familiar cup and watch birds at my familiar bird feeder. I've tossed clothes into the washer, and am soon going out into the gardens to see what changed while I was gone those two weeks.
Getting back to the transparency. Its something I wanted for myself some time now but held off because of this reason or that. All those excuses or reasons are gone now, and its just me left at the keyboard. I wonder if I need to start a new blog or if I can let it flow into this one. When I started this blog it was meant to record my quilting projects and process, with only the hint of deep.
Deep is who I am. Quilting is one of the ways I express that deep. Writing and storytelling are other ways. I need to think about it and see what happens.
The feature on this blog (that I set up) lets a reader comment to me from the sidebar or the check boxes at the bottom. If you read it another way, you might not see those options and find others that work too. However, feel free to e-mail if you have comments or ideas, knowing that it will come to me for my eyes only and not go public. I didn't mean to have my blog become a dialogue but know that part of communication is chatting and sharing opinions. If folks email and ask for something more, I may have to reconsider the set up and see how I can make it work. If no one connects with me, then it will simply work as is.
Blogs have taken on various faces over the years, and have different reasons for being. I am going to work on the intention I have for mine, and want to simply say that its not a journal or diary as such. It is or can be a stepping stone for anyone who reads it to measure their own deep.
I need a place to express my deep, and this is the place I am choosing for now.
Its hard for me to pick one photo of what MN represents to me. First of all, my adult Sons live there with their families.
They were young here in this photo; younger than their own children are right now. Of course, I can hardly wait to see all of them. And to see my friends and family living nearby. And the state with its pine trees and birch trees, its green humid land. I want to ride across a bridge over the Mighty Mississippi River singing to her often as possible. I love Minnesota, though its been said the crop of mosquitos is quite heavy this year & they are wicked. It will be lovely to visit gardens, and homes, parks and the cabin up north. It will be fun to attend parties and water parks, picnics and potlucks, and visit my favorite restaurants to laugh the days and nights away. And it will be like heaven to hear songs of the Cardinals in the trees and the Loon on the lake.
So its true that I will be away from home here in Cali, away from my computer and this blog, and away from my sewing machine and quilts. Away until my flight back to Bakersfield on the 25th and the drive home through the mountains that night after 7 pm.
The only thing left for me to do today is to putter outside in the gardens, water the indoor plants, and put all my quilting away so that when I come home its like walking into a space that is clean, cleared of energies and consecrated. This is my sacred space, this area where I create.
Sometimes I wonder if living so far away from my family and most of my friends that 'home' is more of an ideal than it is a reality. With the two being thousands of miles apart, its like I am a traveler who always wanders in heart, ever reaching for one place or the other, calling both places home because my heart is in both places.
Some years, when I traveled more, I made it a special point to stay online to stay in touch, but anymore, what is important to me is living in that present moment, with the people within my grasp. I am so often without them, that when I return for even a short stay, I give them my full attention.
I hope you return when I return. There will be stories to tell about what I learned when I was in Minnesota.
I remember signing up for a reminder email about a homemade gift exchange, so when I got one last week, I read the website again and signed up.
It goes by quickly for the month of June, and signup for this round is over. However, if you follow the link to craftaholicsanonymous blog and are interested, the next one is planned to start on November 1. You can sign up for a reminder email. The organizer runs it through another program called 'Elfster' which actually pairs the swappers. That program has its short-comings for a first-timer to navagate. AND this swap is for handmade gifts from people who make crafts of any nature, & is not for commercial purchases. It took me several times of browsing links to get it. It might have been set up for Secret Santa events & people who buy gifts.
The person I got is called 'my draw' and after answering questions I posed to her, I learned enough to start making her gift. With only a short month to create something and get it shipped by the July 1 deadline, my guess is that the gifts will be small. My draw sends to someone else, and another person who got my name as her draw will send to me.
Risky, isn't it? Putting childhood fantasies of receiving a gift made just for you into the hands of a stranger! As the pre-schoolers say, "you git whatchu git, and you don't throw a fit!"
If all goes the way it is supposed to happen, I will receive a homemade gift from my secret elfster after the first of July!
We all have an important part to play in the circle of life as well as in the circles of our life. We struggle to believe in the stories we heard as children about fairness and honor, and to believe in the heroes and heroines we discovered who expressed our deepest values. Reality can be that hard-fought struggle that gets played out every time we take a risk.
We learn. We learn to trust ourselves to make our own way, to even buy our own gifts. Yet we allow others to find treasures we appreciate around us, and cannot even see within. We wait for approval and validation, forgetting to look in the mirror and simply claim it. There is no guarantee in free will, and free will is my obsession. I want free will for myself and hope I honor it in others even with all the risks.
All I have is this moment. All I ever need to be is who I am right here and now. If someone sees me and hears me, and wants to share their true self, then this is what risking is all about!
I am not sure any choice we make is really a mistake. Oh sure, our choices will cost us, and sometimes in quilting, just as in life, an ill-made choice doesn't produce the results we want and costs us in resources, time or relationships. Bottom line, is that it must become a lesson learned or we are going to make it again and again until we do get it right.
I made eight mug rugs using the batik squares my friend Virginia sent me. I loved how seven of them turned out. The squares are quite unique & came from her Mother's estate, so may have been purchased many years ago.
One didn't quite do it for me. I tried something different on it because I ran out of the batik strips I had in my stash, and used a larger piece of batik that seemed to coordinate with its colors. The batik fabric, for all its beauty, overpowered the square. It was too much and focus on the square was lost. Perhaps I should have cut it into strips and centered the square rather than put it in the corner. With so small a piece, having only one focus might have made it work better.
However, it gave me an opportunity to practice some free motion quilting. I am donating it to the give-away table at the clubhouse where I baste. Someone will like it or have a use for it, even if they give it to a cat as a cozy landing place. The backside is one fabric that is ok too.
My projects wizz by quickly and other than this blog, I haven't taken notes to say what works and what doesn't. Like most people, when I choose unwisely, I just brush it aside and keep going. Hopefully, somewhere, in the recesses of my mind, there is a memory stored that can serve as an inner voice telling me to chose differently and better. Most of the time, we don't share our own mistakes as much as we share our successes. Yet, perhaps we should so that others can benefit in their lives and with their choices.
But then, would they? Or does a person have to walk their own path to find their own values and meaning?
I have had other 'failures' with some mug rugs I've made and called them practice pieces. Some quilts are like that too. And when I think of it, some relationships I've had that didn't work out were practice pieces. I learned first of all, what I didn't want in my life, learned to self-identify so that I discovered my values, my behavior & how I fit in the various circles. Its not a failure to evolve. Its not a mistake to step away from dysfunction. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to get the process of living down & right, honorable & authentic.
As in everything, our experiences can swing like our moods. Some days are exciting and productive and others not so much. If a person is lucky or really works at it, they have balance in their days. Some great philosopher probably has a theory for it. I think I just simply live it out.
This morning, I cut & pieced Mystery Block #3 in both the 6" and 12" sizes. My friend Carol dropped off a bag of scraps either from her own stash or from the guild give-away table. I pulled out the smaller pieces first to use on this 6" block; cut what I needed and tossed the end tiny bits. They really were bits to start with, and while I know some quilters save those bits too, I do not. The white daisy on black is in every block so what I am making has it as a tie-in fabric. When I saw how this turned out, I realized that I had stopped looking at the actual pattern when I put it together and had come up with a very different block, which is still nice.
My 12" block is done too, & made to specs. Its not that either is 'wrong' because the entire quilt is going to be quite scrappy. AND the 6" blocks are meant to be the back of the quilt & will in no way be coordinated with the front blocks.
This quilt is all about my appreciation for the intensity of black fabrics. Black is interpreted in various cultures and in various religions. In many ways, it is almost the metaphor for the extreme swing between highs and lows.
They say the color black is the absorption of all other colors and is the absence of light. Too many of us have assigned black to the dark side, to what hides and is negative. It can be almost a racial profiling.
Black also protects us, and implies independence, transition, and a strong will (see Goth-dressing). It can be sexy in how we dress, can emit the look of power and authority.
I also know that if it is combined with white only, it is actually argumentative, which is why I chose to make this quilt with colors too. I think the colors brighten the energies of a strict black and white look.
Its almost 10 am here in southern Cali on a Sunday. I have three of the Dream Pillows to close, and one more mug rug to make, all of which go with me on the trip back to the midwest on Wednesday. Then there is some more weed-pulling in the gardens too. Its a day balanced by many things I love.
