Summer 2016 Goals

May 20, 2016May 17, 2016 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

To introduce my newest goal, I need to talk about my new pattern covers. I made them in a new software I’m trying to learn, Affinity Photo, fearful that any day my upgrades on my Mac will render my old copy of Photoshop more obsolete than it already is. And no, I don’t want to pay a monthly fee to use their software (are you listening, Adobe?) I just heard that Affinity Photo is launching a beta version for PC users, too, although it was developed as a Mac software. So this is the first of my summer goals.

They also have Affinity Designer, which I’m also trying to learn, but since I don’t know Adobe’s Illustrator very well, it’s like banging my head against a wall. When my friend recovers from getting her daughter married off, I’m going to ~~bug~~ ask her to teach me a few things.

To keep reading is another summer goal, and this was the latest book I finished, while quilting up a few things for my Riverside Sawtooth post. It set me down so carefully in time and place. No, it’s not a grip-you-by-the-throat novel, but a quiet one, filled with well-drawn characters from a time in our past. I listened to it on Audible, which I would recommend, as the narrator really gets the sound of the voices and it adds another dimension to the story, I think.

Can I mention Summer Events? Here’s about the only political statement I’ll make on this blog: we recently (and sadly) lost our ability to have a primary election here in California. We’d all been so excited, actually asking everyone “who are you going to vote for?” and really getting interested in politics in general. We are one of the final primaries on the Presidential Election Schedule, and for once, we were going to Have a Say! Except now we aren’t, because of the recent events (which has made great theater, I have to say). So, hope everyone else in the United States had a great time voting–as usual, our votes won’t count. H o w e v e r. . . I will be watching the conventions. After teaching Critical Thinking a few years, and having my students watch the conventions and have them analyze the speeches, the rhetoric, looking for the logical fallacies and spotting all the weakness in candidates’ arguments, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. It’s going to be a long, hot summer out here, and hey! we need something to compensate us for not getting a Primary Election.

And it that’s not enough excitement (!), we can always watch the Brazil Summer Olympics, although with all the talk lately, it may end up being like our primary. Click on the link at the end of the post to see this colorful Olympics design in action.

In other news, my garden is growing well, I’ve got a few more projects in the pipeline, but my main quilty goals this summer are as follows:

1. Finish My Small World.

2. Quilt Shine: The Circles Quilt

3. Quilt Riverside Sawtooth

4. Keep working on this quilt. Remember this? It was one of the units in the New Hexagon Millifiore Quilt. I’m halfway through, and my friend Laurel is all done with hers. And her quilt is gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous, so I need to perserve and Be A Finisher. (However, notice I didn’t say “finish this quilt,” but instead wrote “keep working on this quilt.” I am reasonable.)

5. Finish this quilt top, and if possible get it quilted, too.

6. And… this one, too.
I am all done with the hand-stitching. Now just to figure out the borders, and get it quilted.
Easy, peasy. We are coming right along in our Quilt-a-Long, with Step 5 coming up on June 2nd.

Other summer goals:

7. Be a good citizen and follow the national political process. Every other week ought to be about right.
8. Visit my kids and their kids. And my parents. And my husband’s family. That’s about eight car trips right there. I’d better work on #4–if only to have some hand sewing for car travel.
9. Celebrate my one-year anniversary of recovering from my surgery. I think a night in front of the TV would be appropriate, in my nightgown with hand-sewing on my lap, to memorialize where I was last year at that time.

10. And oh, yeah. Vote in California’s Primary. I’m so excited, yes yes yes.

Quilts · Something to Think About

Oktoberfest’s Blocks and Quilts and Plans

October 20, 2015October 20, 2015 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

While I really love the festive cookies sold during Germany’s Oktoberfest, it’s the giant pretzels I really miss.

And who can forget the cute dirndls, wore by the most traditional Bavarian women? (I have three, all made by hand with fabric lugged home from Munich.) But in honor of those weeks of partying they do in the Bavarian Alps, I’ve been partying here in my sewing room, finally gaining enough stamina to put in nearly a full day’s/several days’ worth of work. In other words, it’s catch-up time.

A package of blocks from our Traveling Threads Bee finally caught up to me (we’ve had some delays) and I placed Amber’s blocks (she blogs at One Shabby Chick) all over my design wall to admire the handiwork of my beemates. So often when I get a batch of blocks, I recognize that there is a different goal for those of us at the end of the bee. Those at the beginning work on creating blocks and filling up the holes. But if you are towards the end of the trading circle, a good look at the quilt is necessary, asking: what does this quilt need? In this case, it needs some negative space, the hint given by that lone six-pointed appliqué star there on the turquoise background.

The theme of this quilt is “I love you more than all the stars,” with the request to make pink stars on a range of blue backgrounds. Amber also included this really cool lame cotton, which of course I couldn’t wait to use. I kept singing the lyrics to Good Morning, Starshine in my head, and realized that’s where I needed to go. So above, are three starshine blocks.

I tucked them in around the edges of the quilt, pronounced it done, packed it up and mailed it off to the next partner in our bee.

After two years of saving a few Halloween-themed Polaroid blocks, I pulled them out and put them into a random bordered square arrangement. While I should be working on Halloween in March, or even April, I never feel like working on Halloween then.

This, along with my basket quilt and another quilt Lisa and I finished for a friend, are now at the quilter’s. Yes, I’ll enjoy my Halloween quilt NEXT Halloween.

Except that there may be another quilt joining that one: this is our stack of fabrics from Primitive Gatherings quilt shop (and there are a few more from Temecula Quilt Company) that Leisa and I put together, so we can make this:

Halloween Quilt 1904 — *from the ever-talented Thelma, at Cupcakes ‘n Daisies*

However I promised her we wouldn’t start on it until after the holidays, so the fabrics are stashed away until January.

And I’ve made it up to T/t on my Quilt Abecedary project (T/t were too shy to pose for a photo). Only a few more, then I’ll need to start really honing in on the theme of my quilt and what I want my Spelling Bee-mates to make for my quilt. I’m first up in January, so I’d better get cooking.

And then after that finishes next year, I’m game to do another traveling bee. And then after that. . .

It’s nice to be looking far forward once again, rather than just hoping I can make it through a day at a time. I used to do quarterly goals for several online finishing collaborations, but have fallen out of the habit of looking ahead, bogged down as I was in this summer’s detritus of the here and now. I still don’t fill up my schedule book too far ahead, not knowing if my stamina will hold out.

And does it really help to focus on your goals? We’ll never quell that controversy, but according the article, How Goals and Good Intentions Can Hold Us Back on the 99u blog, focusing exclusively on your goals may “spoil your experience of the activities you’ll need to pursue.” Even the first article linked above notes that “relentless fantasizing may actually reduce one’s odds of achieving goals.” But, rather, “adopting the mind-set that your strengths and abilities are not fixed, but can improve over time and with effort, can have self-fulfilling results” (99u — always a good site for reading about this sort of thing).

For this reason, I’ve found often that reviewing my achievements often provides motivation to go forward, a sort of “I finished that one, now I can finish this” one sort of process. Or I can say to myself, “I like the feeling of having completed this,” and enjoy the feeling like when I walked out of the post office yesterday, having mailed off a bee-mate’s package of blocks.

To close, here’s ~~one~~ two more thoughts:

but don’t forget to. . .

I plan to quilt.

Quilts

Finish-A-Long, Quarter 3 Goals

July 12, 2013 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

It’s that time again, time to set out some goals for the next quarter. The rules state that they have to be projects that you need to finish, and since I’ve been laid up with a foot surgery this summer, I’m repeating some of the projects from last go-round, that still need to be finished.

The repeaters are the Hunter’s Star (really, it’s so close. . . yet so far), the Lollypop Tree quilt, and the Friendship Quilt. The Lollypop Tree will require me to be all the way healthy, so I’m not even sure I should put it on this quarter’s list, but I certainly don’t want it bumping into the next, where holiday fun things take time away from quilting. So here it is.

New to this list is my Four-in-Art quilt for August 1st’s reveal and while I’d like to add on November’s Art Quilt to this one, it’s not started yet. You know the rules. I am also making up a little quilt with citrus colored fabrics that Laurel brought to me post-op (to cheer me up), and I’ve had fun making the stars (it’s also a Schnibbles quilt).

I’m also making a quilt with Anne’s Design, from SpringLeaf Studios–the Facets quilt is so intriguing and so fun. She provides multiple ideas for you to create; this is just one of them.

For the first time, I’m including two handmades on the FAL list, as I see that this is a possibility in the FAL Universe. I’ve had the pieces cut out forever to make this Pleated Tote out of Keiko Goke fabric. Time to finish it up. Likewise Hot Mitts for Rhonda–fabric pinned early in June, but not yet completed. It’s awaiting quilting and construction. Time to get that out of the sewing room and off to Rhonda (it was her birthday present–which was last month–!).

And that’s the beauty of Finish-A-Long (FAL): to get things finished and done and out of the sewing room, as Leanne says. Join up with your goals *here* at She Can Quilt, and get some of your projects finished!