Time to make a decision

I am no longer 32 yrs old, working out of the house full time, with 2 smaller children, and able to function on 4 hours of sleep. I am, however, 45, working full time from home, 1 grown child and 1 almost grown child, and functioning on 6 hours of sleep each night.

So, what's the point you ask? When I was younger, I made more time for each and every hobby/craft that I enjoyed. Let's see, there was sewing of course, rubber stamping, card making, scrapbooking, painting, jewelry making, ribbon embroidery, cross stitching, crocheting, and candle and soap making. For the past 3 yrs it has been not much of anything except sewing here or there. Well, I am back into my sewing big time and I feel the time has come to make a decision on which craft supplies to part with.

I have a 5-foot shelf filled with scrapbook supplies that I first thought I would just get rid of, but now I am thinking about just paring down the amount because eventually I want to work on more albums. I have a few under-the-bed boxes filled with rubber stamps that haven't seen the light of day for almost 3 years now. I have a cupboard above my washing machine filled with acrylic paints and brushes. I have have more scrapbooking supplies in a file cabinet, and more wood for painting on up in the shed. Are you starting to get the picture??? I have way too much stuff and the thing is if I live til I am 100, I'm never going to be able to use it all.

So, I guess my decision has been made to start clearing out. Next decision - whether to donate or have a yard sale in the next few months when the weather finally breaks. I know! Yard sale first and then what's left - donate!

Hopefully I can part with my beloved crafting supplies as easy as it was to write about it.

More about me and adding to my stash

First off, let me say this blogging can be intimidating to me. I'm still getting the hang of it. One of my main goals is to get the picture uploading/editing/posting figured out so that it's a no brainer.

More about me... I've been sewing for 34 yrs now (holy cow! when I figured that out I was shocked!!!). I used to sew a lot of garments, almost everything I wore for me and my children and occasionally something for my hubby. I got into quilting about 14 yrs ago when I was an Operations Manager at Joann Fabrics and built up a stash that was crazy wild. For the past 3 yrs though, I haven't really made time to sew except when a request came in from a friend or a family member, but I remembered that I was much more balanced when I was sewing, thus the resolution to get back into it daily.

I am amazed at how quilting has progressed. It's so free-form and really no pattern is needed now a days from everything I see. The fabrics have me amazed, but I have yet to go back to my favorite quilt shop until I have saved up a few more dollars. I want to be able to spend without guilt.

I did, however, venture into a Joann Fabrics on Sunday for a little pick me up.

I wasn't really looking for anything in particular, just some fabric with a more modern flare that I didn't have. I loved the retro look of some of these.

I loved this fabric and in thinking, probably should have purchased more than the 1 yard that I did. Since the store I was at is 45 minutes away, I think I'll either look online for it or at my local little Joann's.

How do you all do it?

I thought that keeping a blog and posting each day would be a breeze as much as I am on this computer during the day, but I am finding that is definitely NOT the case.    I keep thinking that I must keep up with the rest of you wonderful quilting bloggers by posting something creative, whitty, or something that I learned in my quilting adventures, but I am still getting the hang of how to even find my blog to post on!

Mind you, I am keeping up with my 20-minutes a day goal of sewing/quilting whether it be working on piecing or hand quilting and I do want to post pictures of my projects, but the times seems to pass me by and before you know it, it's bedtime again.  Even though I don't write on here that much yet, I am in heaven reading everyone else's musings and searching the web for more projects to add to my list.

Enjoying hand quilting again

In my New Year's quest to work on sewing/quilting at least 20 minutes a day, I pulled out a quilt that I have been hand quilting on and off for about five years now.  The bonus of sitting in the recliner hand quilting in the winter time is that you keep nice and toasty warm while you are working, thus I have only worked on this particular quilt while in the winter time.  Summer would be just too sticky!

I've finally finished hand quilting the entire inside of the quilt with gold thread, which shows up nicely.  I'll probably work on the checkered inner border next.  I haven't really planned any of the quilting in advance, so when I finally get to the outer border, then I'll decide on how to quilt it.   This is a twin-sized quilt in colors of gold, rust, cream, and deep purple.  Unfortunately, the picture doesn't do the colors justice.   The stars are each 4 smaller paper pieced blocks sewn together to make a larger block.  There was no pattern for this particular quilt per se, but I used the measurements from a quilt with 12-inch squares set on the diagonal to help figure the measurements for the corner triangles and the side triangles.