Taking a closer look…. at life and blogging
Posted: February 16, 2012 Filed under: On blogging and life choices... 18 Comments »Warning: the following is a bit of a self-indulgent rant, but a very introspective, heartfelt one. I hope you’ll hear(read) me out…..
You would think I just told them they were each getting their very own pony or something….. all I said was that I was going to start spending more time with them and working(sewing/blogging)less!! When I saw the excitement on my girls’ faces over this, I knew I had made the right decision. Indeed, I have come to a hard truth recently; I’m simply not capable of being a supermom/quilter/blogger/happy person/good wife, etc., at the same time- type of person! At least not at this point in my life!!
It seems there are those out there who can juggle all those things and make it work, and I have much admiration as well as a strong dose of curiosity for what they do and how they do it. I would love to know if there is some secret to their ability to accomplish so much, but in the end I have to judge my life authentically and not based on someone else’s achievements. **deep sigh** I just know, for me, I can’t create at the pace I was(which was pretty slow, but still somehow took a huge chunk of my time), and still take walks with the girls…..
to look for birds and pick flowers, make homemade soup when they are sick, be totally present and not rushed during a game of cards or the like, get myself out of the house for a yoga class or sit for 20 minutes for a glass of wine with my hubby, the list could go on, you get the idea, right? I personally am not able to multi-task very well when it comes to my quilting process.
Letting go of things you once thought were so necessary or important can be a very liberating feeling. While I have an intense desire to create and am continually inspired, I realize it is time to re examine and re- prioritize my life and perhaps “shuffle” my schedule a bit. Change is good!!
My children and my family as well as my own self care, are obviously my number one priority! I have been halfway present in both my quilting work and my mothering work lately and that is not okay for me. Yes, I’m very torn over this decision because I think there is huge value in being a female role model to my girls, one that is passionate, talented, motivated and inspired to create, however I also realize that whether I make one quilt a year or 20, they know that their mom is all those things- and is also valuing them and their childhood…
enough to be more present for them than I have been. I am grateful to be a stay-home mom and I waited a long time to have children so I feel strongly that this is the time in my life that I should be devoting to them. If it was necessary for me to work in order to provide for our basic needs, then I would not feel the same sense of guilt over the time I spend away from them. But currently my “work” is not exactly a lucrative endeavor, in fact quite the opposite. I should probably be getting a job just to pay for my “work”. Ha!!
I feel strongly that I need to come to my work and my blog with a sense of joy not obligation. Soooo, I still have every intention of creating, designing, sewing, and blogging, but just at a much different pace. I’m working on my time management skills and my energy level(herbal supplements, yoga, eating better, etc),
but until I get a better handle on how to speed up my process, you’ll hear from me less often and it may not always be about quilting…. or maybe it will. I honestly don’t know at this point!
I realize that my blog as well as my life is evolving and finding its path and I have to trust in the direction that feels right.
“You can do anything, just not everything” a quote from David Allen found here along with many other favorite quotes.
I realize that I could easily have just kept these thoughts to myself and shut down my blog a bit, however I feel grateful for the community I’ve become a part of here, and I felt compelled to share some of the thoughts that I’m likely not alone in having. I so appreciate the support I get through this blog and look forward to continuing to expand as a creative person, quilter and blogger….. just at a slower pace.
many blessings~~~ karen
“Love” Day Crafty Goodness…..
Posted: February 13, 2012 Filed under: Valentine's Day Craftiness | Tags: yarn, knitted, pinterest, hearts, crayons, brownies, heart mold, kids craft 3 Comments »I wanted to make a little something for the girls this year as a special “I love u” V-day gift. I found this great pattern from one of my many favorite blogs Natural Suburbia, and realized it was a do-able little project for me.
Since I have such a ridiculous amount of pink, purple and red yarn, I figured I could pull a few of these off.
You just need #4 double pointed needles, some yarn and some really basic knitting know how!!
THEN, my Valentine’s Day crafting streak wasn’t quite over; we decided to make these fun heart crayons that I found through Pinterest-Gosh, how I love that little time sucking site. While I had ambitious intentions for other projects as well, due to the major amounts of inspiration I have gathered here, I figured those can wait for another day, week, year!!!
They were sooo fun and by far one of the easiest projects to do with little ones. From the collecting of the old crayons, to the popping out of the mold to see the finished heart! Oh the anticipation!!
Anyway, last on our V-Day list of craftiness, was a little baking session-(by the way, this all occurred over the last two weeks- wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea, that I/we just whipped this all up over the weekend!!- definitely not my life)!! The girls and I signed up to bring brownies for our school’s First Valentine’s Day Dance -Bake Sale. I was so excited to make some cute little mini heart brownies,
until I discovered that my heart mold pan was now destined for the “art/craft drawer” instead of the kitchen. A little warning on the above project, if you want to actually bake with these molds again, DON’T use them to melt crayons in!
Have no fear, fortunately I have a well stocked drawer of cookie cutters. I found just the right size heart and we were able to make our heart shaped brownies after all AND have lots of leftovers to enjoy!! I’ll call that a win-win!! 
Wishing you all a very love-filled, and beautiful week!!!
p.s. the girls are all back to their extremely energetic selves and have recovered fully AND a big thank you to all who had kind words of encouragement and assistance on my last post. I have been making some progress and am feeling much better about it– Yay for quilting victories!!! I really appreciate the support. We are so lucky to have this great quilting/blogging community!!
~~~karen
A Quilting Conundrum!!!
Posted: February 10, 2012 Filed under: Quilting Conundrum | Tags: circle, help, improv, kona, mistake, solids, triangles 9 Comments »I have so very much to learn!!! Starting with the ability to be less impulsive in my quilting process. I tend to get an idea in my head and not think it through enough before diving in to my fabric, rotary cutter in hand.
For this quilt, I fear that simply will not work. I have created more work for myself, since, I think ripping seams out and reworking these strips to be as close as possible in the center, is the only way to remedy this design. I think it would also make the circle…. more uuuhhh, circular! What was I thinking?
I love this design and while I did make a very informal sketch prior to beginning, I didn’t exactly think about the construction of the quilt very much. I have never worked with triangles before, so this is really new ground for me.
I get that I needed to make the angles sharper and the space in the center as close together as possible, and you can see I started doing that on the outer ones.
Maybe I should have added white to the top of each section and sewn together long triangular strips. I instead used long rectangles and cut the angles before sewing them to the white in between pieces. Ugh!! My circle is only halfway done and my idea was to do two halves of the circle, sew in a small half circle center and then sew the two halves together Not sure if any of this is making any sense.
I love the way it could look. For any of you “superquilters” out there, who have any idea what I’m talking about, do you think there is a way to fix it or am I going to have to abandon my original idea and opt for an appliqued circle in the center? Definitely NOT my first choice of options since I was envisioning a totally pieced look.
I shall be taking my very humbled self “back to the drawing board” to see if I can make some sense of this over the weekend!!! I think I’ll try a smaller version first as a mock-up, probably what I should have done in the first place. Hoping to have a successful update next week.
Have a great weekend!!
~~~karen
Slowing the pace this week…..
Posted: February 9, 2012 Filed under: Solid stack and knitted cowl | Tags: knitted, wool, Kona solids, stack, fabric pull, cowl 4 Comments »My sewing room has been pretty quiet this last week. Between, a funeral for the amazing dad of an old friend, and coming home to a house full of sick kiddos, there is not a whole lot of creativity happening here in “blooming poppies” land.
I did manage to pull a new stack of solids for a sudden quilt vision I had. I’m kind of going out on a limb with these, but the final creation looks good in my head anyway!! We’ll see….
Before all the sicky germs descended upon our home, I managed to finish the simplest cowl in the world for my oldest daughter, Miss K.
I think I cast on about 9o or so stitches and then knit until I felt done.
It doesn’t get much simpler than that, right? It’s a great way to use up those half skeins of yarn I end up with so often.
I’m hoping for a house full of well and happy kiddos soon, so mamma can get to work again.
~~~karen
I heart scraps!!!
Posted: February 1, 2012 Filed under: Scrappy String WIP | Tags: improv, log cabins, pink, red, scraps, string quilt, WIP, wonky 9 Comments »My oldest daughter, Miss K, was going through my scraps the other day and mysteriously ended up with a giant pile of pinks and reds. She must have Valentine’s Day on the brain!!
I thought it would be fun to put together a little string quilt to utilize these little bits of goodness. I do have an insanely large amount of pink scraps, it’s time I start making room for more.
The red scraps were a bit harder to find but we managed to muster a few.
I have a few other projects that really need to come first, but this one was so fun and easy to work on, before I knew it I ended up with about half of a baby size quilt.
Maybe one of the two lovely mammas I know who are pregnant right now will have a baby girl.
This won’t be finished by V-Day but I could probably pull it off by their summer due dates!
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WIP #2
My other litle purely indulgent project is my Echino Punch Log Cabin Quilt that is coming along very slowly!!
I think I’ve decided to randomly place the blocks in a “sea” of Kona pale flesh and bone, to make for another very ”improv-y”mixture of color and piecing.
Not entirely sure about this one, but I’m just going to go for it and see what comes of it. FYI- Colors are REALLY off in this last photo, I promise it’s actually prettier in person) !!!
I’m linking these little WIP’s up to Lee at Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesdays. Go on over and have a peek at all the other fun projects happening around bloggy land.
Retro iPad Case…. gifted!!
Posted: January 31, 2012 Filed under: Another iPad case....gifted!!! | Tags: case, clocks, gift, iPad, padded, retro, ruby star shining, straight line quilting, turquoise 3 Comments »I think it’s safe to assume that the package containing this
little goodie has arrived safely to my lovely and oh so hip sister-in-law!!! She requested an iPad case like the one I talked about here, and I know she loves all things Mid-Mod, retro, so I knew this was the one for her. So here it is, the “retro iPad case”- a bit of an oxymoron don’t you think?
I got to cut into my new Ruby Star Shining fabric and do a little random straight line quilting on this one.
Although I wanted to do some piecing originally, the fabric was just so right on and perfectly retro, I decided to keep it simple and clean.
I love how this case turned out, so much so, that it almost didn’t make it to the post office; I was so smitten with it, I thought for a moment of keeping it for myself. But how many iPad cases does one girl need?? Hope you like it too Kelli!! xoxo
New Quilts in my Shop
Posted: January 27, 2012 Filed under: New quilts in the shop | Tags: etsy shop, quilts, sale 1 Comment »This week I decided to add a couple of my quilts to my nearly empty little Etsy Shop- blissfullyblue!!
and my Fact or Fiction Quilt. (Actually I had second thoughts on this one when I realized how much my dear Mother -In-Law/friend, loved it and wanted to keep it in the family. I’m kind of relieved! She wants to hang it in her bedroom!! I guess I wasn’t totally ready to part with it either!!)
I’m still trying to get used to the idea of selling my quilts, it seems strange to me still, but my hope is that they will end up with someone who can truly appreciate them. I love them but simply can’t keep on keeping them! It’s time to let go!:-)
Feel free to stop on by and take a peak!!
More fun news….
Posted: January 25, 2012 Filed under: Time Traveler MQG 100 Days Feature | Tags: featured quilt, MQG 1 Comment »If you haven’t been over to the Modern Quilt Guild’s 100 Days of Modern Quilting yet, you might want to check it out. I’ve got another quilt featured today!!!! It’s one of my old favorites, that you may remember from this post, if you’ve been visiting here for a while.
Hope your day is full of goodness!!!
Visiting an old trusted friend….
Posted: January 24, 2012 Filed under: Echino log cabins | Tags: blue, design wall, echino, green, improv, log cabin, purple, wonky 5 Comments »I’ve been visiting an old friend lately,
the trusty log cabin(wonky-improv style)!
while the block is an old familiar, the color scheme is definitely not, for me anyway!
I felt the need to play around with some new to me colors schemes. I was ready to bring in some pretty, whimsy, girly colors after my last few quilts. Not to mention, I couldn’t wait to cut into my new echino bicycle stash.
I’m not sure yet, about this combo. I think I’ll have to sit with it for a bit. I have a feeling, after a few more visits, it’ll grow on me!
A Big Thanks and Some Small Progress
Posted: February 18, 2012 | Author: bloomingpoppies | Filed under: A Huge Thank You | Tags: binding, comments, Echino Punch, Pezzy Print, quilt, support, thank-you | 1 Comment »I was so pleasantly overwhelmed last week by all the beautiful, supportive and thoughtful comments on my last post. I read and appreciated each and every comment. They helped me solidify my feelings on this topic and reassured me that I’m doing what’s right for me at this time in my family’s life. I am grateful for the time you took to share your thoughts. I hope you all understand that I have chosen to thank you here rather than individually in order to stay true to my intention of spending less time blogging. Thank you, Thank you!!!!
I’ve been getting in a little sewing time in very small doses, and managed to put the binding together
for my Echino Punch improv quilt(shown here as a WIP). The back is still waitng to be finished…. and may be waiting a while at the rate I’m going!!
But the binding was quick and easy. I love this little Pezzy Print pattern so much(had to show a second photo of it), I can’t wait to see it on my quilt. I’m using a lot of it for the back as well.
I’m still stumped on my circle quilt and have decided to put it away for a bit. I hope to have a lightning bolt of an idea strike one day that will make it all clear…….. but, I’m not holding my breath for that! :-)
Hoping you have a beautiful weekend!!
~~~karen