Happy Birthday to Me!

It's my birthday.

     Facebook has been suggesting that I choose a worthy cause and invite my friends and followers to contribute to that cause in lieu of gifts for my special day.  What a great idea!

     I'm not sure where this "I get to tell you what to do because it's my special day" thought process came from, but I'm jumping onboard.  Here's the plan:

Sew something.

Anything.

     No financial commitment, no "click here" to donate box.  I hereby command you to spend the day working with fabric.  Make a mess in your sewing space.  Cut a bunch of fabric into small pieces and sew it back together again.  Drag out a project you haven't worked on in awhile and make some progress.  Hand stitch a binding.  Get creative.  At the very least, Take an hour or two and ponder your next project.  You have no choice, it's my birthday and I insist.  I plan to do the very same thing.  To be honest, that is exactly the same way I spend most of my days.  That doesn't matter.  Today is MY birthday and I insist that you celebrate!  Now go get busy.

     I don't want to give you the impression that there are no birthday gifts coming my way.  The Hubs and I celebrated with dinner and tickets to the community theater production of "The Savannah Sipping Society" over the weekend and among other things, I have been gifted a TWELVE WEEK yoga class.  Yoga is something that for years I have promised myself I would try "when I have the time".  Without the daily responsibility of running a retail store, I have run out of excuses. 

     I'm not going to deny that I am intimidated by the thought of pulling on a pair of yoga pants and joining a bunch of women that are probably shaped like twigs and move like Gumby.  I only hope that there is at least one other person that groans louder than I do when getting up off the floor.  Wish me luck! 

This is NOT me.

….. but I do like those pants!

Area 51

     

     You have probably heard of Area 51.  That desolate expanse of desert somewhere out west where UFO's are alleged to have be spotted.  I have news for the UFO seekers out there.  If it is UFO's you are looking for, then you don't need to look any further than the corner of the closet in my sewing room.  I have my own personal Area 51.  It's been years in the making.  It has history, drama, unidentified patterns, unusual shapes, odd forms, coupled with all the thrill of a nice clean archeological dig.

     Much like the U.S government, I have been denying the existence of these UFO's for years.  Our recent household move forced me to recon with the UFO pile that had accumulated over 25+ years.  I had to stop lying to myself that I was going to "finish that later".  

     The first chore was to get all of those abandon projects in one place and admit to myself what I had.  That was eye opening!  Doing my best to channel Marie Kondo, I sorted, subdivided and purged the piles - THREE times to pare it down to what you see here.  (I don't normally subscribe to Marie Kondo and her "Does it bring you joy" organizational methods.  I have a mountain of scrap fabrics that most people would toss out and every single piece brings me joy.  I also have a kitchen full of small appliances and pots and pans which don't even make me smile, but I'm pretty sure I have to keep them.)  

     What is left in my personal Area 51 is what I feel is a reasonable representation of pieces, parts and half finished projects that I can see myself completing or putting to good use.... at some point.  After all, some of the UFO's in my stash simply need binding.  They are "finished" quilts.  It's just that they aren't "done".  (If you are reading this and you don't understand that there is a difference between finished and done, have a quilter explain it to you).  

     I had nothing so solid as a "plan" for the mountain of bits and pieces that exist in Area 51.  I simply could not part with things like baggies filled 17 batik Nine Patch blocks and a 4" stack of squares to make more.  Or the 2" finished quarter square triangles that represented the possibility of an amazing Ohio Star quilt, or not.  The nine out of 12 completed blocks from a 10 year old mystery project, that wouldn't take much more to complete.  Or the mountain of corner clips that only needed to be sewn together, pressed, and then squared to some reasonable size before they would make a great start on a whole new project. I couldn't possibly trash those.  

     Now I am back to work in my new sewing room. I am busy writing programs for quilt shops across the US and Canada.  That process requires that I design, make, and write the patterns for multiple projects.  Quite often in the design process a project takes a turn and my original idea is trashed.  I was working on a new block of the month using copious amounts of half square triangles when size became a problem.  Then remembered those clipped corners in the UFO stash! 

     A bit of digging, sorting and restacking and I pulled out those waste triangles.  They have been in that UFO stash sewn together and pressed for so long, waiting for their chance to shine that I can't even remember the project they originally came from!  A bit of squaring up and ta-da enough scrappy half square triangle units for 12 different pieced blocks with a stack to spare.  I even have a beautiful batik to use with them.  Marie Kondo be damned.  Vindication for scrap hoarders everywhere!

Now to figure out what to do with the original HST in the wrong size......

 

Settling In

     I'm in our new home, all alone for a few days.  There may be 21.67 million other residents here in Florida, but I am not responsible to feed, clothe, water, cook, clean or do the laundry for even one of them.  You might be thinking I've found heaven.  I have to admit, it's pretty close.
     All, and I do mean ALL of my sewing supplies have arrived and have been distributed in my new sewing space.  Everything is here except my new long arm, which is on order.  I have everything I need and all the time to myself temporarily.  Are you jealous?
     We moved in stages, so I have been arranging things as they arrive.  Then re-arranging as more things arrive, and more, and if possible, even more sewing supplies to find a home for.  If it is possible to have too much sewing stuff, I might be getting close.

     I posted this photo of phase 1.  Friends that know me well remarked that my room would never stay that neat.  I wanted it to.  I really did.  I have additional shelves on the other side of the room, assigned baskets for everything, the organizational plan is a work of art. 

     I'll cut to the chase, this is what it looked like earlier this week.

     Scrap quilting is a messy business.  I have designed a new set of Scrap Crazy templates for Creative Grids that will be available to purchase later this fall.  The prototypes arrived last week and I couldn't wait to try them out.  While a normal quilt might be made of several hundred pieces that are cut from 6, 7 or 8 fabrics, a scrap quilt requires those hundreds of pieces be cut from hundreds of different fabrics. What some people would describe as a mess I see nothing but potential!

     There was one small mishap in the process.  Without my loving and exceptionally handy husband here to help me install the design wall in my new sewing room, I attempted it myself.  I assumed that a generous length of flannel and some duct tape would serve me well temporarily.  I was wrong.

     These pieces WERE the beginning of a well organized scrap quilt until the duct tape let go sometime in the middle of the night.
     I broke down and unpacked the garage boxes until I found the staple gun.  Then armed with a ladder and some assistance from the "helpful hardware man" I managed to install the design wall properly.  
     One rainy day later, the pieces on the floor came together to make this, the first quilt from my new sewing space. I'm naming it Changing Direction.  Seems appropriate.