social time for granted right up to the moment when it wasn't there. To be fair, since moving to "Working From Home" 5 years ago, I've been looking for a way to connect. Still there wasn't any kind of sense of urgency. Until...well, ya know....March, 2020. I don't think I really understood how much our year was going to change until the President closed the airports to Europe. Of course, the connections in our lives were just starting to be cut. My work life didn't change. Ladies still called, call after call, wanting their clothes but just the idea that I couldn't go anywhere was...well, let's just say it was a wake-up call.
Jump ahead 18 months and I get an email from a reader. (That still kinda blows my mind. 10 years later, I still can't get used to the idea that anybody actually reads this dribble blog ) She wrote saying she was a reader and had noticed I was in the Erie area. From there a conversation was struck up and...drum roll...a connection was made. God truly blessed me since not only was a connection made, but a connection with a lady that was just as smart and quirky as I am. Plus she's a talented art quilter who knows what she's doing! Like I said BLESSED!
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| To-Do App On My Phone |
So we decided to stay connected by making a monthly meeting. At this meeting, we can Show & Tell finish projects, bring pieces we're stuck on and review our To-Do lists. Yes I said it...TO-DO Lists. I was bold enough to suggest we start monthly lists of projects we wanted to be held accountable to. Two weeks in, let me tell you, it was one of my better ideas. Every time I don't feel like working, I think, "I can't report in that I've been a lazy
Out of the three projects from my list, of course I chose the slowest one to concentrate on. Little by little though the pinwheels are coming together. Since work is back to normal, I have enough brain power to sew a couple hours a day (I've been listening to Star Trek Voyager while doing it - boy is that good!). I decided to do the pinwheels in hunks of colors and values and then just arrange them up on the design board. I first started with hunks of mediums and now have been adding in the hunks of lights. You can see how all of a sudden it goes from just an ordinary scrap quilt to the beginnings of something wayyyyyy more interesting. I always had an idea of what direction I wanted these little trapezoids to go in but to see it starting to come together is really exciting!
And it's all because I made a connection.
This weekend I really need to get back to my sewing machine and work on the rest of the list. Mind you, I said that last weekend and the pinwheels dragged me back to them...but my studio is lonely and needs me!!
Have you made any connections? Was it a good or bad experience?
So What Have Been Up to Creatively?
5 comments:
I LOVE that story! How fun that must be to find a new friend to meet each month to encourage and connect with. I'm loving your emerging quilt too, the colors are divine.
Your trapezoids are really lovely in those colorways...are you sewing them together by hand?
The fabrics look like batiks, are they? Nice work in progress...hugs, Julierose
Such soothing colors in the in your, if I recall correctly, EPP piece. Stunning.
Your EPP pinwheels are just spectacular and I’m so glad you made a quilting friend “IRL” (In Real Life) through your blog!
JulieRose, Yes this project will be completely by hand. I've been working on and off on it for like .... 10 years... but want to get it done this year for the local fair. There are NO batiks in it since I find those hard to needle and I plan to hand quilt this. The vast majority are commercial screen printed fabrics but there are a few digital in there too.
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