Thursday, October 2, 2014

Room for one more?

tap, tap, tap...testing, testing...is this thing on? okay, here goes…

i devour quilting blogs. i could spend all day on bloglovin’, bouncing from one blog to the next. so many fabulous, talented ladies (and gentlemen) out there! they’re all so willing to share their successes and failures, lessons learned and a-ha moments, and even the moments where they just have to turn off the machine and walk away for a bit.

i wonder...is there room for one more?

i’ve dabbled off and on with sewing for years. i started turning the hand wheel for my mom when her old machine would get stuck, using my little kid fingers to turn the homemade barbie clothes rightside out for my grandma, watching in awe as my neighbor created incredible wedding gowns, learning to cross stitch as a girl scout. then as i went off to college my mom gifted me with her old machine. i remember sitting on the living room floor of my college place, listening to music, laughing with my roommates and sewing clothes to sell in the parking lots of grateful dead concerts. then shortly after graduating college came my first quilting class - a six-week class at the local community college. i can’t even remember now what made me want to sign up. i worked on the sampler until the applique blocks and then i was stuck. into a box it went and so my first UFO was born.

a few years went by and life marched on - wedding, house, dog 1, kid 1, kid 2, dog 2. the poor sewing machine collected dust, only coming out for the occasional clothes repair. sometime between kid 1 and kid 2 i started to hear my sewing stuff calling to me. a heard of a shop near my work that only sold quilting fabric (what?! there’s more out there than just joanne’s?!). i stopped by one day on my lunch break and fell in love. it’s a tiny shop but the ladies were friendly and fabulous. they showed me around and once i laid eyes on the samples hanging in the classroom i knew i’d be back soon to take a class.

so here is the birth of my blog. for now it’s really just for me. a place to record my projects and hopefully be able to track my growth and development as a quilter. maybe one day other folks will want to read it and maybe learn a little something or find a little inspiration. for now i’m just gonna think of it as my little corner of the internet quilting world :-)