Small Gifts on Off the Wall Friday

Sarah Lyte, machine quilted
Rough organic edge

Caro Ramsey 
pulled tight on a board

 I learned long ago that I don't like "making" gifts.  I mean at first glance it seems like a broke girl's bestfriend, right?  But in reality, it's a lot of time and effort.   In today's world time is definitely equated to money. Making a gift even a small one can be hours of work.  

As for effort....well think about it...how hard is it anymore to whip your phone out of your back pocket, pick a gift on Amazon and press a button to buy??  In a day or two,  it will be easily shipped to the person including a personalize note. The other option?? You can design, make, finish AND deliver a gift.

Honestly both of those things (time and effort)  I don't mind actually....it's more the fact that most people don't appreciate the time and effort that went into the gift.  But is that a THEM thing or a ME thing??  Without this evolving into a long therapy session of  why you give a gift (to give some love or to recieve some love), let's just say, I don't like making gifts.

Well, until I do.

I think this is fused, machine stitched 
And the lettering was done on a 
computer 

Deb Smith, post card
Blanket stitch edges

I work with a Disney Princess of a young woman.  She's kind and empathetic to a fault  and it's been a challenge to blend her Gen Z warm heartedness with my Gen X snarkiness  cynicism   realism. But we've done it by finding common ground.  One of which is that we like things that are homemade.  

To that end, I want to make her a little birthday gift. Little gifts aren't as much time or effort and they still say I care enough to not buy a gift for you off of Amazon.  Especially for someone who will appreciate it.  So now that I am feeling better, I spent some time revisiting my pinterest boards and picked some cool ideas.  I posted some inspirational photos here which I tried to attribute properly but the older pinterest gets the harder it is to track that down.  

All of them have two things in common...they all involve stitch texture which I still want to explore some more and they have a cool collage element.  Plus, I want to keep the size 5 by 7 or so.  I love the fabric post card ideas too.  

Pretty aren't they?  Our team is small and we've established a rule of small little gifts...nothing elaborate or expensive but just things that say ... I appreciate working with you everyday.  Let's see if I can actually get it done by April.

Oh that's a good thing about making gifts...it comes with a built in deadline to help a girl along on her reset!

Do you have any good ideas for small scale quilty projects?

So What Have You've been Up to Creatively?

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Off the Wall Friday

 Week 2 of this weird stuffy cold I have.  I wouldn't doubt its some Covid variant...stuffy nose...tired as all get out.  But that's it.  For a cold it's not too bad.  But it doesn't leave me much energy to get much done besides work.  

That said....I did manage to start a texture sampler.  What is that?  Oh, I'm so glad you asked!  One thing rug hooking and quilting has in common is that with both of them, you take perfectly good fabric, cut them up to form something new.  With quilting the visual appearance of the fabric basically doesn't change. (Well unless you are collaging it!)  But with rug hooking it can change drastically, especially with textures.  Textures are what the rug hooker names most non-solid wools like plaids, houndstooth, ombres etc.  Once you cut them up into little strips and then hook them into little loops, they look totally different.  Plus, the look may change with the size of the strips.

To get a feel of how a texture will hook up, you can start a sampler.  The concept is easy enough.  You take pieces of the fabric whole and then hook a sample square next to it.  I would have started this long ago but I got all caught up on getting the layout done.  Silly me!  I mean why?  I haphazardly cut some

rectangles and strips and got going.  I used a blanket stitch to sew down the whole pieces and hooked in size 4.  At least one I did.  The next one was so loose it needed to be in a 6 because the 4 would not hold together.  That isn't totally uncommon because some textures are too loose to hook in small size strips. For this start, I picked three colors I wanted to audition for the next step in my Santa rug. 

This is far as I got.  Cool right?  I don't think any of three will do but at least I know what they look like hooked up!

Hopefully I get more done this week!

So, What Have You've Been up to Creatively?!

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Off the Wall Friday

 I'm struggling with a cold this week, so I'll keep this short.  You all sure know how to make a girl smile.  Just when I needed a little encouragement, you're there to answer the call.  Nothing makes me happier than to see a post spark a conversation in the comment section like last week.  

I think we can all agree to coin  Julierose's phrase, "Wordy Person".  I 100% represent that.  If it has words involved, I'm in. I grew up playing word games, writing pretend newspapers and creating poetry.   Not to mention I'm the mother of a published author.   Blogging has just continued that trend of words in my life.  

Plus, I totally agree with Sara. It's a great way to journal your creative journey and find your people! As Margaret said, "Bloggers Unite!"

So thanks for the encouraging words....with that I'm going to go put my stuffy head in a steam tent and just ask....

 What Have You've Been Up to Creatively?

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2026 Reset Continues on Off the Wall Friday

 

Yea know, sometimes I wonder why I keep blogging. I mean, it seems that in this ever-changing world of technology, things come and go.  And blogging probably has had its time.  Why read a 5-minute post, if you can have 2 minutes of content spoon fed to you on Tik Tok?? 

Then I remember the main reason I keep going is so that it keeps me going. Without my weekly post, I would just shut down creatively 4 months a year and peak my head out when it turned March. 

  Is it just me or does it seem that as we get older the weeks go faster?  It's like the months just run into each other.  And here we are already into February! So, my reset continues.  

I happily can report I did finish my studio...

The before....

The After....

The thing about my studio is that it's little but functional.  After many failed attempts this set up works the best for me, but the secret is I have to keep it cleaned.  Andddddddd the secret to that is everything has its labeled place.  So Whaaaaa-Laaaaaaa a Reset! 

Also this week, I manage to learn how to use Notion as a catalog for my creative journey.  Does anybody else use it to help keep track of your projects?  For me, with a blog and pinterest it's a little redundant but I needed it for my Rug Hooking Journey class, so I buckled down and posted my Santa Rug to it.  I'm not sure how I feel about it yet.  So far it seems a little clunky but that could be just because I'm so new to it.  

Now that I turned my studio back into a sewing space, it's time to get back after my BOM quilt from 2023!  Honestly, I have no idea where I stopped...but I did keep all my fabric together in a bin marked "Project" (one of my smarter moves!).

There's the tub of my BOM Project!

That's all for me this week ...  what can I say?  it's cold and dark out!

What Have You've Been Up to Creatively?

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Color by Emotion on Off the Wall Friday

Inspiration

 It's been a tough week.  Nothing like a crippling icy snowstorm to cramp your creative style.  The bright moment in the week was Cindi Gay's Rug Hooking class.  I really look forward to her classes.  They have just enough structure to make them productive but she doesn't mind going off on a tangent of everything rug hooking.  Because her background is originally painting, lots of times it comes with a fine arts bent.  

This week we finally summarized our Geometric Rug Journey.  What started off with how to do a geometric rug back in September ended up with a season long lesson on how to design a rug overall.  The funny thing is that it's not really that much  different from the way you design a quilt.

The Process

1. Find Inspiration and Do Research

2. Brainstorm Design Ideas

3. Settle on One or Two Ideas

4. Do Value Studies

5. Pick a Palette by Color Emotion

6. Pick a Directional Hooking Plan

7. Do Small Sample Pieces

8. Transfer Design

9.  Hook the Rug!

Looks cut and dry doesn't?  No, its a LOT of work.  The nice thing is that when you are doing this much work ahead of time, the hooking will go quickly since you know it's going to look great.  

Most of these weren't unfamiliar but one concept that was new to me was pick a color palette by emotion. Anybody who has been paying attention knows that I love color.  I've explored a ton of ways to pick palettes.  But Cindi's favorite way is to take pick two emotional descriptive words and go from there.  I could explain it but it's more fun to show you....

Romantic and Muted

Joyous and Bright

Moody and Mysterious

Neutral and Serene 

You get my drift. Plus, Cindee doesn't like to limit herself to a handful of colors like they do in these examples.  She's happy to pick as many colors as she wants as long as they stay in that emotional category.  I think this is really smart.  I always say that the color palette you chose for a piece is going to go a long way to helping you convey what the message of the piece is overall.  After all, emotion is at the root of most art.  

All along I've been doing the exercises she's assigned, but now it's time to 

Defecate or Vacate

Fish or Cut Bait

Paint or Get off the Ladder

Or simply decide on one of the MANY designs from step 2 and work my way through the process.  

Stay tune...since our homework is to do exactly that, I should have something to show you next week. 

So What Have You've Been Up to Creatively?

 

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The Storm before the Calm on Off the Wall Friday

View from my window

 Yes winter is in full swing here on the Great Lakes.  I know this has become an annual rant but LORD I hate the snow and the havoc it brings.  Storms are so destructive to the routine of everyday life.  It makes me want to hibernate rather than my goal of resetting.  

Let's face it.  Saying you're going to reset and actually doing it are two different things.  This week, I set out to walk the walk to go along with all that talk last week.  To that extent I had to start digging out my studio. 

Right now, I can easily say my studio is going through an identity crisis. It's a small space to begin with and to bring another art form into it is going to take some ingenuity.  But first things, first it needs digging out....

Right now it looks like this....

I believe in showing it all

Not just the pretty pictures  'cause the struggle is real 
And if you know you know..

I took a little time each day getting things put back, cleaned up and thrown out.  I was doing good actually...until I came to the elephant in the room.  Well - rather - the sheep.  What was I going to do with the small stash of wool I had accumulated?  Storing it in bins was not ideal...its hard to see what you own and find what you're looking for.  Not to mention, it's best to store wool in a well-ventilated area.  That really meant I needed to get more shelves.  But where to put them?  

Luckily, I took the problem to my husband and he said why don't you buy them with wheels and they could slide back into an under utilize corner.  That way you can slide them out when you need them and tuck them back when you don't.  Oh he's smart...no wonder I married him!

The trick to buying good shelving is to figure out what you want to store, how you want to store it and how much space you have.  THEN take all that information and head to Amazon which has a ridiculously huge variety of sturdy, inexpensive metal shelving.  I decided that I wanted 6 tiers, about 30" long by 15" deep on wheels...for under $75.  It took a while I found buy what I was looking for. 

I sorted and folded the wool and it easily fit.  I took all the smaller pieces and put them in a bin that fit on the bottom tier.  

It went from this....

To this....a perfect solution for $61...I'm all happy.

You'll have to wait to see the final reveal of the whole room because I'm not quite done yet.  I've been working steadily but I don't want to get all crazy.  

Speaking of crazy...here's what's new on this week's Rug Watch! Little by little, he's shaping up.   I'm getting the hang of hooking yarn.  It gives a more nubbly texture that is appropriate for the trim of his vest.  But it's harder to control that's for sure....

That's it for me...What Have You've Been Up to Creatively?

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The Word of the Year...Reset on Off the Wall Friday

2023 Block of the Month Club
Where I left it

 Here I am!  WoW, its hard to get back to the normal routine after all the hoopla of the holidays.  I hope everyone found peace and happiness as 2025 ended.  Our family was blessed for sure.  Just getting a break in the winter weather to celebrate Christmas was amazing.  Spending some quiet time with my inner circle was a gift too.  It seems that lately, I'm getting less and less time to do that.  

Maybe with getting some well-deserved rest, has me wondering....what comes next?  I won't lie.  The last 10 years has been hard.  So much change...change of jobs, change of family dynamics, change of life! I never found my groove living in a state of flux.  Just in the last year, I am beginning to see the light at the end of a long tunnel....finally.

2026 has me looking at my studio again...if I could find it under all that stuff in there.  It has me feeling like sewing again....there are at least three projects I want to work on this year...my 2023 Block of the
month, my mosiac sunflower girl and finish quilting my Rain, Rain quilt.  It has me looking forward to a week at John C Campbell's to learn how to make a textile doll. And of course...continuing on my rug hooking journey.  

All these feelings help me choose my word of the year....Reset.  Honestly I think that's what I need...a total reset of my creative life.  2026 is about leaving the personal condemnation of the last decade behind, giving myself some grace and a big reset. 

I'm not quite sure where 2026 is going to lead...but with writing this all out...at least I have an idea.

Thank you for listening.  

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