around the world blog hop

Last week the inimitable Amy Friend of During Quiet Time tagged me in the Around the World Blog Hop. Amy is a local quilt guild friend. With two other quilty fabric-y friends, she started the Seacoast Modern Quilt Guild. I’m an active member of the SMQG and am so thankful for the friendship and fellowship it offers! (Shameless plug for joining your local chapter of the MQG!)

In return, I am tagging two people I met through SMQG, and one person who daily provides such friendship and fellowship that I have to remind myself we haven’t yet met in person.

Stephanie of Simple Sewendipity is a fussy-cutting, rainbow-sewing, Elsa-and-Anna-dress-making force to be reckoned with. The quilts she makes for her girls always make me jealous, because they are full of such sweet details and amazing colors. She’s working on a rainbow alphabet quilt right now for one of her daughters that I can’t wait to see finished!

Mary of See Mary Quilt is also a bit of a rainbow connoisseur–but in her work, beautifully detailed machine free-motion quilting is the real star. Mary is also a knitter and a garment sewer and a stitcher of all things. What I love most in her work is that she seems willing to try just about anything stitchy, at least once!

Renee of Quilts of a Feather recently had a whole bunch of state fair judges confirm that she is a master quilter! She does quilting that I cannot believe comes from a domestic sewing machine. She doesn’t shy away from doing work that is incredibly painstaking and detailed, and sometimes the size of her pieces belies the amount of work that went into them. One of the most affecting quilts I’ve ever seen is about her experience in childbirth.

Stephanie, Mary, Renee, here are the questions I’ll answer (and that I’m looking forward to seeing you answer, in turn!):

1. What am I working on?
2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?
3. Why do I write/create what I do?
4. How does my writing/creating process work?

1. What am I working on?

I’m behind. Can you tell? This summer I took up a new activity/hobby (more on that this week, I hope) and the time and energy it took meant I had to drop *something*. I tried dropping cooking but my family didn’t love it–so the blog got lost. This is all to say that I have a long list of things I need or want to do right now, and they’re sort of getting done, but none as quickly as I’d like. So…I still have a pay it forward 2014 gift to make.

It started out like this:

And then because I couldn’t let it go, and nothing helps a stagnating to-do list like time waste, it became

I finished the top yesterday and can’t decide if it’s too “a lot of look” to still gift to the poor waiting pay-it-forward recipient. But I DID use a lot of stash!

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Besides the fact that I also knit and make clothes, I think the key that distinguishes my work is that I like a lot of loud color. I don’t particularly love to work with neutrals, and I don’t love solids. For a long time modern quilters used too much white fabric. “We”, as a group, still may be using too much white fabric. When I start a project, I’m not interested in purchasing eight yards of Kona Snow just to get started cutting. I put a lot of money into my stash so I am interested in using only the colorful fabrics that I enjoy buying to create a whole quilt. I think my current pink-and-gold/orchid-and-ochre (pink and pee pee?) WIP is a good example.

3. Why do I write/create what I do?

Boredom! Being a stay-at-home mom can be isolating. It can also be deadening. Moms don’t get performance reviews or promotions or raises. By choosing not to work outside our home, I was missing out on some project-doing that I really need to be participating in. (I was in publishing project management right before I quit four years ago.) Quilts are more permanent than a well-cooked meal, and, frankly, more well-recieved around here. And writing? Well, blogging has fallen a bit by the wayside for me as Lucy’s gotten a bit older, but I still do appreciate this space to document some of the projects I am doing.

4. How does my writing/creating process work?

I used to think the answer was discipline, and it sort of is. (Make six blocks a day, and in six days, you’ll have enough for a quilt!) But recently, I am finding that a mix of discipline and choosing to do what gives me pleasure works best. So maybe: “do” something every day, but if you hate what you are doing, “do” something else?

Thanks for sticking around for this mike-tap of a post. I’m here! I worked on SO many quilts and sweaters and fun things this summer, and I can’t wait to share them with you. As soon as I resurrect my broken iPhoto library (sobs).