Sunday Afternoon

So happy to be sewing again.

Thanks

[Above: two of my greatest reasons to give thanks.]

Ah, Thanksgiving. What a magnificent holiday. The food, the family, the friends, the food, the laughter, the memories, and the food - what's not to love? (According to my sister and husband, what's not to love is all the pumpkin. Too bad for them that they are wrong!) We spent the weekend in Oregon with my four younger sisters and their families, and we had a great time.

About a week before Thanksgiving, I started writing in a journal again. I just finished this particular journal. I started it on November 20, 2000. An eight year journal. My first entry documents that "Andy and I are dating". The last entry, November 22, 2008, documents that "Andy and I have two children". Wow.

So I finally finished up the last few pages of my eight-year journal. I had been thinking a lot about gratitude, and was thinking in terms of New Year's resolutions and how to show more gratitude in 2009. Then I realized that it was ridiculous to wait until the calendar turned before beginning my personal gratitude challenge. Why not start now? So I did. I started keeping myself awake for a few minutes longer each night (sleep is a precious commodity right now) and writing down some of the events of the day that had blessed me in one way or another. I have found this little exercise to be so uplifting and clarifying. Here are some of the things that came to mind as I was reminded of just how blessed I really am:

11/19/08. Today I was blessed by: friend sending a bag of her pumpkin cookies home for me; daughter reciting her Cubbies verse and earning her patch; baby sleeping for seven hours and then going back to sleep quickly.

11/20/08. Today I was blessed by: a cheerful traffic flagger; Caffe Ladro coffee and barista; daughter's preschool teacher calling her "Angel"; daughter's Cubbies leader telling me that daughter was very well-behaved at Cubbies last night; daughter drawing a picture of her "sad feeling"; baby smiling as she fell asleep; receiving order of children's books from preschool; finding a funny CD that Andy left in daughter's CD player as a gag; dinner out with my family, both girls happy throughout meal.

11/21/08. Today I was blessed by: friendly staff at doctor's office; vision & hearing [I was struck by how horrid it would be to lose either sense]; an apologetic flagger; daughter wanting to learn all of her Cubbies verses, and wanting to know how to spell all the words; daughter spelling "apple" with no prompting [we had told her how to spell it several days prior]; daughter recognizing by sight only her memory verse from last week; Andy cleaning out the pantry; thinking about the love represented by the many items handmade by loved ones in our home; looking through photos of our trip to Austria a few years ago.

11/22/08. Today I was blessed by: girls collecting food outside the grocery store; Andy making a detailed grocery list; pre-mixed formula and having a clean bottle in the car; my sister's invitation to stay with her over Thanksgiving, saving us the cost of a hotel; teaching daughter the "I've Got the Joy" song; clean diapers; a good latte.

I continued this exercise in a new journal, which I haven't been able to find since we returned home from Thanksgiving weekend. A few other blessings, written in the missing book, are: the baby sleeping for nine hours one night (the first time she has truly slept through the night); a person very dear to me very ecstaticly sharing the news of her pregnancy; a friend driving sixty miles one way to bring us a "new baby" meal; a great Christmas tree farm; and an unexpected note in the mail from someone I barely know.

There are just so many things for which to be thankful. They're everywhere! I have read that, once basic needs are met, money and possessions have nothing to do with happiness. Neither do status, education, appearance, or career success. The factor that happy people have in common is gratitude. That in itself is something for which to be grateful! Anyone, anywhere, at any time, can cultivate gratitude. This is a tremendous gift.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Facing My Fears

Hi, my name is Holly and I hoard fabric.

I do. I love textiles and oftentimes view fabric the way others view art. I love the textures, the colors, the design. A really beautiful piece of fabric, alone or combined with others, can take my breath away in the same way that an amazing painting can. Does that seem odd? I guess I view textile arts as, well, just that...art. And paying attention to the details of textile art has actually helped me to appreciate other forms of art more. I can't claim to understand it all. I'm not an artist and have never taken an art class in my life (I opted for an art history class to fulfill my Fine Arts requirement in college). But learning about fabric has given me a greater understanding of and appreciation for design elements, color, and detail. Now I can see a perfect joint in a woodworking project that my husband has done, and I am amazed by how beautiful it is.

But back to my fabric hoarding. My fabric stash is disproportionately large in comparison to the amount of sewing that I do. I tend to save things anyway. I'm not sure if that habit goes back to my childhood, when my family didn't have much in the way of material goods. That's all fine and good, but there is a difference. When you don't have much, you really use the things that you do have. We didn't throw much away when I was a kid, but we didn't stash things, either. We used everything. Now I am an adult and there is, thankfully, no struggle to have my material needs met. I'm still in the habit of saving everything. The difference now is that I don't need to do that. Our daily needs are met without a tremendous amount of scrimping. All those things that I save...they just sit there, largely unused and taking up space. My fabric collection is no exception. In fact, it is the reigning queen of the packrat kingdom in my house.

I have fabric that I am afraid to use because then it will be gone. Classic packrat, yes? You would think I'd grown up during the Depression, not the 1980s. Well, I've recognized this bad habit and have decided to change it. So here are some pictures of things I've made entirely from my stash. The top picture is a small tote bag. I had intended it for a young friend's birthday, but I'm not thrilled with some of the details (I used the thread that was in my machine, white, when orange or yellow would have looked so much nicer for the topstitching), so I think it will be my daughter's library bag. The second picture is of some throw pillows made from a vintage tablecloth. I really love embroidery and bought the tablecloth because I just loved the careful details. Naturally, it did not fit my table. It sat on my shelf for months. Then I measured the designs and ironed the cloth in preparation for cutting it. Then it sat on my ironing board for days. I sometimes hesitate to cut into new, mass-produced fabric in my stash. Imagine my hesitation to cut into a vintage, handmade piece! But I finally did. I cut out 12" squares, added borders, and attached soft pink envelope backs. I think that this was a good exercise for me. Now instead of having a beautiful but unused tablecloth, I have two very functional, pretty pillows. I won't be keeping these particular pillows for myself, but that's beside the point.

Cottage Quilt

Well, it's finally done. My simple, easy, spur-of-the-moment little quilt is done. And it only took (insert sarcasm here) two and a half months.


After a failed attempt at free motion quilting, I decided to just tie it. I don't believe I had ever tied a quilt before. It was nice. And fast. Once that was done, I got to do the fun part. The binding. I like sewing the binding. I like making binding strips, I like machine stitching it to the front of the quilt, and I really like hand stitching it to the back of the quilt. Very pleasant work.


The only thing I had to buy for this quilt was the thread. I like that. I did not officially join the Use What You Have challenge, but I appreciate the idea behind it. Most of the fabrics used in this quilt came from fat quarters that I've had for years or from the ready-made stash that my mother-in-law gave me last spring. The batting was left over from a larger project, and the ties were made from floss in my embroidery basket.


I think I'll keep this one. It is receiving blanket size and would make a good baby gift, but all of my friends who are currently pregnant have opted to not find out the gender of their baby until he or she is born. Figures. This is most certainly not a gender-neutral quilt. That's okay, I'm happy to keep it. Right now it lives on the back of the rocking chair in Elise's room, and I think that's probably where it will stay for a while.

Itchin' for some Stitchin'

I picked up this book at a thrift store the other day. It had price tags from three different used books stores on it. The reselling stops here! It's a great reference of all sorts of stitches.

I'm planning an embroidery project for a Christmas gift, and I'm both excited and nervous about it. I've never designed an embroidery pattern before...thus the nervous part. But I love embroidery, and it has been a long time since I've done any handstitching, so I'm looking forward to this project. I just need to get the design done. Look for pictures here in...uh...January.

What I've Been Doing

Andy found these great copies of Little Women and Little Men at a used bookstore the other day. He actually brought every copy the store had for me to inspect, and these are the two I chose. The copy of Little Women is just lovely - really well bound, with attractive pages and type. Actually, Little Men is much the same way, but it is an older copy - 1947, I think - so it is a bit more fragile and has a nice vintage quality to it. I like them. (Little Women is my all-time favorite book. I think this is my fourth copy of it.)


Last fall, I made my first (and, so far, only) crocheted blanket, with the intention of using it as a lap blanket in the living room. When I began the blanket, we had a red-striped slipcover on our sofa. By the time I finished the blanket, we had switched to a blue plaid sofa. Oh, well. Anyway, Andy immediately adopted the red blanket as his own, which greatly pleased me. It's nice to see something you have made being used and appreciated. However, I was still without a reading/watching TV/hanging out in the living room blanket of my own, and I wanted one that coordinated a bit better with the blue sofa. So I made this one, mostly from fabric that I already had, supplemented by a few fat quarters. I backed it with a large brown flannel print, which makes it extra soft and warm, and then I used the same flannel for the binding, just to make things easier.



On Tuesday, I made marshmallows for the first time. I'm really pleased with how they turned out. I haven't made much in the way of candy, so I was a little nervous about this, but everything worked out fine. Next time I'll work on making them pretty. This time I was just aiming for general marshmallowiness.



So there you have it - some of the fun things in my life from the past few days (well, last few weeks in the case of the blanket).