planning for the possibility of time

We're all asked "where do you find the time?" for something. Sewing, reading, baking, exercising, cleaning -- to fit anything else into an already-full life is a balancing act. Whether or not these 'extras' happen depends upon us being prepared for that window of time we may or may not get.

I met a friend (and her four children) at the park the other day. She was dressed head-to-toe in work-out gear -- work-out shirt, shorts, shoes -- and pushing a high-tech, aero-dynamic pushchair. I asked if she'd just been running. No. About to go running? No. "But if I put on all my running clothes in the morning," she said, "then I might find a chance to run before the day is over. If I don't put them on, I definitely won't go."

And I think perhaps we can all apply that thinking to our desire to do something -- when we wake up in the morning, we must plan for the possibility of having time. If we're already "dressed", physically or mentally, surely we're more likely to spring into action when the heavens align and a little free time arrives. We're also able to utilise smaller amounts of time -- ten minutes can easily be wasted away by preparations, but if you're ready for it, that ten minutes becomes useful.

Here are some ways I find helpful to be prepared for time to sew.

1. Think bigger than your time.
Twenty minutes is not enough to make a quilt. Or a dress. Or much of anything. But twenty minutes a day, over time, becomes substantial. Don't let your time limits today prevent you from starting that big project. You don't need to work out how it'll get finished. Once you start it, finishing becomes easy.

2. Leave things incomplete.
It's much quicker to start on something that is already in progress, as you don't need to spend much time planning. I tend to leave a pile of things that are ready to be trimmed, pinned, or sewn together ready for the next day, as these are things I can jump right into the moment a little time arises. Of course, if you don't have anything on the go, it's also great to begin something new -- just leave yourself something incomplete ready for the next day!

3. Make organising easy. 
I'm rubbish at taking the time to organise when that same time might be used to create, and so have found very simple ways to keep things visible and ordered. For example, I use a lot of 4" and 5" squares, and so I have a bowl for each size on the bookshelf. They are not particularly pretty bowls or neat piles, but so much time is saved by being able to grab the right size each time without sorting.

4. Build up a supply of prepared materials. 
Pre-cutting squares (in fabrics and sizes you often like to work with) can make piecing a quilt top very quick. In general, if I use up most of a fabric on something, I cut the remainder into 4" and 5" squares and add them to the bowls.

4. Keep fabrics "roughly sorted". 
Every now and then, when things get into such a mess that the drawers don't open, I go through and fold things properly. But in between, I find that what works for me is not wasting time doing neat folding every time I use a fabric, but keeping the fabrics orderly enough (i.e. grouped by colours) that I can find what I want quickly.

5. Have several things on the go at once. 
Basting a quilt takes a long time, and requires that at least the more mobile child be in bed (as "jumping" on the layers, or using them as frog blankets, is not generally recommended). Therefore, it's helpful to have smaller, quicker activities to do at times when a few hours and the entire living-room floor are not available. Like a song sung in a round, whenever something nears the end, something new begins.

6. Remember that no amount of time is too little.
Ten minutes is enough to sew seams. Five minutes is enough to cut. Sixty seconds is enough to pin something. Smaller amounts of time add up, and by getting the little jobs out of the way, when you do find a lovely big hour-long chunk of time, you won't need to waste time trimming corners!

when in doubt, start something new

This month, I'm trying to break the Guinness World Record for the most things on the go at once. (Which is a glass-half-full way of saying that I can't manage to keep my mind in one place long enough to finish anything).

Here's a sampling of the in-progress things that trip me up on a daily basis:

A rainbow of zips, ready for numerous open-wide pouches. Quilts in planning, in my favourite new gridded journal. A quilt on a tray, ready for chain-piecing. Quilt tops, stacking up, waiting for that once-upon-a-time day when I'll actually begin to enjoy basting them. And binding, binding, binding, in every colour.

life, squared

I am a square, and you are a square, sewn together by red thread. 

Sometimes we forget that we only need to fit together along one side. One square cannot complete all the sides of another. It's geometrically impossible, without enveloping the other. We don't need to be the same colour or the same pattern; we can be total opposites and that's okay, too. We're just two squares, in the end, and we alone do not make the design. 

This morning is a square and the words you said yesterday at breakfast are a square and what happens tomorrow afternoon will be a square, and all we have to do is run our fingers over them and appreciate that they are here, no matter whether we think they fit. They are sewn to us. We are sewn to them. We are sewn to each other and to the people we love and to people who don't know us and to the people next door who climb their trees and throw pinecones over the fence at us. We cannot unpick our seams. Nor should we try.

inspiration: colour vs. pattern

What inspires you? Is it shape and design that you love? Or are you drawn to that unexpected touch of colour, that perfect palette that gets your creative cogs turning?

Of course, the things that inspire us most usually have both elements -- an interesting design in colours we love. But I've found that I often miss out on sources of inspiration, simply because I can't see past the colours used. And so, I'm trying to train my brain to accept inspiration in both forms. Here are a few examples of patterns that appeal to me in spite of their colours.



These sandwiches combinations inspire me to try mixing half-square triangles of different patterns, or even different textures. (Corduroy with cotton? Denim?)

I'd love to have a go at a solid quilt, with star sashing -- perhaps all in black and white.



This modern sampler is beautiful, but I might ordinarily skip over it simply because of my awful bias against anything that uses the colour green!



And this little town can easily be adapted to any color scheme and style (though I might keep the pink and black...)

On the other hand, for a little colour inspiration, have a look at some of the colour mosaics over at Stitched in Colour. And if you happen to like a certain Red Red collection, feel free to cast your vote!

(images sources: 1, 2, 3, 4)

you are sew loved

"Feeding the people I love is a hands-on way of loving them. When you nourish and sustain someone, essentially, you're saying that you want them to thrive, to be happy and healthy and able to live well."

Author Shauna Niequist writes about her love of food, and how she has found that cooking for others is a tangible way of loving them. And though I don't often feel that way about food, that's exactly what sewing means to me. Sewing for the people I love is a hands-on way of loving them -- of keeping them warm and comforted, and perhaps brightening their day with a bit of colour. Emotion often stays concealed in the remote world of the heart and mind, but we can bring it out into the physical realm of the senses. Love is a warm bowl of minestone soup on a cold day. Love is a soft blanket to wrap around your shoulders when you wake before dawn. It's hands-on, it's communicated.

This quilt is a bit of tangible love for Art and Lylabeth -- a couple we met a week after we moved to Texas and were feeling very distant in that new-start, new-place sort of way. They showed us love with homemade cinnamon lemonade. Love was a physical space around the dining table, or room on the big leather sofa. Love was well-thumbed pages in borrowed books.

Next week, then, this quilt goes up for auction at the Salvation Army Banquet in honour of Art. You can find more details on the event here.

in progress: colour string theory

An upcoming project required me to spend yesterday evening cutting several hundred 5" squares, in (almost) every colour of the rainbow. And left over, at the end of each strip, these odd little scraps, very thin and all 5" long. Ordinarily, they'd all be swept into the bin, but at the moment I'm on a bit of a mission at to find a use for every last inch of fabric.

And so, rather than join the hoards of homeless scraps, these skinny little strings got pinned, in colour order.

Once they were pieced into groups of six, though, I laid them out and the neatly ordered spectrum was rather than less inspiring. I tried a few arrangements, and settled on simply skipping over the yellow section.

In true string-fever fashion, this little mini-quilt is stuffed with a dozen strips of batting, cut off the edges of larger quilts over the past few months. And now for some totally over-the-top quilting to hold it all together...

in progress: kite quilting

Trying something a little different on this quilt -- diagonal lines, alternating between single and double rows of stitches. It reminds me of kites -- as if what we thought was the sky were simply a million blue and white kites, flying so close to each other that we can't see the blank expanse of universe beyond. 

hand-printed fabrics

These fabrics were all hand-printed by lovely people around the world (but mostly, in Australia), as part of Leslie's third fabric swap. 

What a collection! I went through today and cut some of the fat quarters up into 5" charms, ready for an upcoming project that's going to require a very large stack of squares. (More on that later.) I loved how the leaf print from Melanie turned into so many complimentary squares when cut. (The white-on-cream is hard to photograph, but really gorgeous in person!)

The little grey Dutch Houses, made by Linda, would have lost their roofs if cut to 5", so I've kept them in long strips, ready for inspiration to strike.

In exchange, I sent these fat quarters of "Wild Geese" flying off around the globe -- a design inspired by a favourite Mary Oliver poem.

"the world offers itself to your imagination,

call to you like wild geese -- harsh and exciting"

That's exactly what sewing is -- a harsh world of sharp pins, blades, and needles, filled with bright colours and prints, and the excitingly limitless possibilities they promise.

+ all finished +

These twenty-three crosses are all packed up, and headed across the country to their new home.

It took me ages to work out how to quilt this design -- swirly stippling didn't seem to go with the geometric design, but I couldn't bear to sew through the black crosses with white thread. In the end (thanks to a little quilterly advice), I used straight lines, but skipped over each cross. The crosses are then outlined with a line of black thread. Time-consuming and oh-so-much turning, but finished at last.

On the back, a gingham-ish black print, broken up with a line of low-volume prints from the front.

Such a pleasure to sew with this collection of all time favourite fabrics, and experiment with low-volume prints like this. When I look at the quilt from a distance, new patterns seem to emerge in the background, from where the pure whites or the greyer fabrics fall, or where the little fox heads pop up. And, of course, just a little bit of red.

one red square

One-hundred-and-seven blues, whites and greys, and one red square -- this quilt top is done! It's made with blues pulled from the stash of ancient history, plus a few all-time-favourite Summersville squares, plus a little newly-acquired Bella, by Lotta Jansdottir, and of course the good old solid whites and greys.

This quilt is destined for the Salvation Army Banquet auction, coming up on May 9th. The banquet is in honour of our friend and mentor, Art King, one of the first people we met when we moved to Texas nearly four years ago, who sadly passed away last year. I wanted to make the quilt meaningful, somehow, without being fussy or cute, and in planning the design, I remembered something my granddad once told me, in reference to his watercolour paintings:

All great art has a spot of red in it somewhere.

All great Art.

Art, with his passion for the famously red Salvation Army, was the red -- a stand-out, never-afraid-to-be-himself sort of guy. Always visible, and yet able to get along with and fit into the community of other squares (!).

+ + +

A quilt of black plusses -- paying hommage to the lovely Pia Wallen blankets I see and love in Scandinavian-style homes. The idea was inspired by Film in the Fridge's colourful take on the Marcelle Medallion quilt, using only one part of the border from the original quilt to make an entire design. I loved her use of low-volume whites for a more interesting background, but decided to do away with the multi-coloured plusses in favour of simple black.

I couldn't resist throwing in some low-volume prints with just a little colour -- some favourite red dashes (from the Walk in the Woods line), and a little yellow Lotta, too. From a distance, though, it is simply a black-and-white design, and the prints and variances are only apparent up close.

After posting a photo of the blocks for my quilt on Instagram, I got a request for a custom quilt in the same design, and so I'm overjoyed to get the chance to make this -- my favourite top so far, without question -- not once, but twice!

the road less travelled

Sometimes, we don't have a map. We find ourselves wandering, circling back around, searching for the trail. Nothing. No signs, no markers, no well-worn paths to show us the way. And so we guess. A gap in the trees; we'll take it. We walk beneath the enormous grey electricity pylons, half expecting to be arrested for trespassing, sure that at any second we'll stumble into a mess of wires. It's less than idyllic, but a hundred times better than loading the girls back into the car and driving home hike-less.

Our path turns, away from the power plant we thought we were destined for, and we catch a glimpse of something shimmering through the tall grass. A little further, and we find ourselves on the grassy shore of Lake Bryan. A dozen sailing boats are having a sailing lesson; they spin and tip and jostle each other, and the students' voices carry across the water to us as we eat our bananas and alphabet pretzels in the grass.

And I suddenly have a new favourite place. A favourite location: here, beneath the criss-crossed clouds on this warm spring afternoon, in this secret little spot. And here, in the unchartered, lonely territory of being a family far from family. I'm reminded that what can seem like a bleak march along a bumpy road can open up into something far more dazzling than I'd imagined. The lake was always there, at the end of the path, even when we doubted.