My space

I often think about my space, my sewing space. I always give thanks that I am lucky enough to have a whole room I can dedicate to sewing. Also give thanks for a wonderful husband who doesn't mind :-). Here I can keep my machine up, make as much mess as I want to and can just close the door and not worry too much about tidying up. I know how lucky I am.
A friend is having problems just now and it made me think about how much of a sanctuary my sewing room has become, unconsciously I seem to have surrounded myself with comforting things.
My patchwork and quilting books, c'mon I'm a librarian! There must be books. In author and height order in case you wonder. All catalogued on good books.

Fat quarters, in colour order, all to hand ready for a quick fabric pick if necessary.

Boxes, I love boxes, the box with hearts contained a wedding present from best friend, the shoe box contained my wedding shoes, a present from my wonderful sister. All now contain fabric, or projects. I make a beeline for biscuit boxes from M&S brilliant size for patchwork block, the jubilee was a great year for boxes.

The bed (well it is technically a spare bedroom ...) very handy for laying out quilts in various stages of development, cross stitch cushions, probably about 20 years old. The black object in the red bed, is a knitted dog, a lovely lady made him for me when my beloved dog Bud died, mini Bud is so much comfort. He even has his own mini quilt :-)

Things, just things, Jo Malone bag holds pens and pencils, came with a present from my sister, I love my sister. Small jar holding clover wonder clips and boy are they ever wonderful. 3D kangaroo, present from friend (the one who is having difficulty just now) she gave it to me when I had cancer, she told me that I was the baby joey and I had to hop into the pouch of my family and friends, she was right, I hope now to try and be her pouch.

Fabulous card from fabulous friend, the writing says it all. The red cupcake box at the back is an empty hand cream jar from another good chum. Chums are the best, don't know where I would be without mine.

My sewing machine, a rather rash purchase last year when I finished chemotherapy. Do I regret it? Do I heck as like :-) love it to bits.

finally view from my sewing machine, I made these during chemotherapy, they make me smile and remind me of what is really important.

So that's it, my sanctuary. For this and so much more I give thanks.

Keeping it in the cloud

This whole demise of google reader really got me thinking. What should and what shouldn't I keep in the cloud? Then I happened to use an old laptop I hadn't used in a while, found some old pictures of quilts I hadn't seen in ages. I am changing phones and found again lots of pics on the old phone I had forgotten about.
This is what annoys me, lots of stuff all over the place, I am a librarian, I love order damnit! So I spent a fair chunk of time migrating pictures from various devices over to Flickr, then I deleted them from the various devices.
Flickr don't you dare die on me now *stern face*
Ok so I want to chronicle everything on here as well, as a back up and if google ever kills off blogger I will go and hit google with my big stick.
Next phase is making sure I have everything on here as well and I keep everything up to date on here. Full of optimism as ever eh Sheila :-)
Here are some of the old pics I found:
A quillow I made for my mother years ago, I think I had labyrinthitis while I was making this, might account for wonky stitching.

Some Bargello runners I made for mum from Christmas fabrics, no excuse for wonky stitching on these ...

Google reader

Well if you follow me on twitter you will have seen much wailing and gnashing of teeth and the demise of google reader. Honestly google, know your fan base please! You are keeping google+ and getting rid of reader??
Anyhoo, it got me thinking, lots of folks were warning about keeping our 'stuff' for want of a better word in the cloud.
Well if the cloud were to spontaneously combust tomorrow I would be stuffed about my stuff!! Most of my stuff is in the cloud, this blog for example. This is where I document, or try to, all of my quilting projects, keep pictures and a running commentary on them. Ok so the world won't end without my blog but I would be a bit miffed to say the least. Flickr too *gulp* everything is in Flickr and I mean everything ... Working across multiple devices it's impossible to keep up with what pic is where, so Flickr is essential. Since Flickr is a paid for service (well the premium version anyway) there might be less chance of it going. I am now dipping my toe into Instagram, I know I know, keep up Sheila. So what happens with all that stuff? Although I get the feeling Instagram is more ephemeral in nature? Who knows, well I will once I have dipped my blooming toe in the water :-)
So those are my musings, no conclusions, but I feel there never will be.
And since this is supposed to be a quilting blog have a random picture of a quilt.

A long list?

After reading a post last week where someone suggested using their planner to organise their sewing I decided to try and get a handle on everything I was attempting to do. That is the whole purpose of these posts. So being a true librarian I have tried to classify them as follows:
Blocks of the month/sew alongs
Craftsy block of the month 2013
Pile o fabric skill builder block of the month
Hello Moon by April Mae designs
Farmers wife sampler quilt
Papillon creations - Around the world embroidery
Online classes
Leah day craftsy class on free motion quilting
Quilt tops in progress
Cutting out material for curvy quilt for weekend with Irene
Jelly roll top in 30s repro fabrics
Black and white quilt top to be layered up & quilted
Silk quilt, totally stalled while I was ill last year, really need to get back to this one.
Sensory quilt I promised a lady on twitter, some fabrics bought, do I need more?
Little patchwork puppy I promised Miss Freya ...

Goodness that's quite a lot, especially for someone who claims to want to finish things ... But writing it all down here gives me a focus for this.

So here is my current wip, Black and white quilt top I have promised a nice lady on twitter, need to get layered up and quilted.

I hadn't realised the light was quite that rubbish ... Here is a close up And another

Looking forward to seeing what everyone else is working on.

My first work in progress ....

eeeeeppppp my very first WiP post. I have been following these for well over a year now and never plucked up the courage to join in. The resolution for the new year was to throw caution to the wind.
So here I am, and more to the point what is in progress?
This is one of the many things I have been working on. The pattern is from the book, Two from one Jelly Rolls:

I have never used a jelly roll before but had a lovely thirties repro jelly roll I bought in Birmingham a few years ago. I so wanted a pattern to use it and found the perfect one in this book.
You take four strips of the same colour, I chose red and add a white strip to either side. You then take the remaining jelly roll strips and sew two of them to either side of a white strip. These units are then subcut as follows:

You end up with a million or so of each, a slight exaggeration but not much ... these are then joined together to make a nine patch.

You then cut this up down the middle (twice) so you end up with a million teensy weensy little blocks like this:

Yep you get the picture. I am loving doing it but it is taking a long time. I took up patchwork because I had RSI and couldnt do the fine needle work i used too. This means I can't really do the marathon subcutting needed to speed this up.
I will just pick away at it though.

Flickr

I love Flickr I do :-), every time I hear one of the social media types I follow on twitter say that Flickr is on it's way out I whimper.
I've been hearing that for 2 years now, I won't get complacent but I think there is plenty life in the old girl yet.
If nothing else the quilting community will keep it going. Is there any other platform out there so perfect for online community events? Knitters have Ravelry which looks amazing but where is the equivalent for quilters? There is thread bias which I have dabbled in, it looks good but doesn't work fantastically with the iPad, also I don't feel it's got the momentum yet. Ok I should perhaps help give it the momentum but honestly it just hasn't grabbed me enough. I will give it another go though, promise :-)
Flickr though, to be honest thats the real reason I have joined so many quilt alongs. Flickr stores all my quilt images, from the initial fabric pick through individual blocks right up to the finished item. I can arrange them in sets, add to groups, pull different quilts together using tags, all in all a librarians dream.
The best thing about Flickr? Well for me it's the community aspect. The recent pile o fabric skill builder BOM already has hundreds of participants, I put up a pic of my fabric choices (bit wild) and already have had six comments.
When I had chemotherapy last year I spent a lot of time in isolation, the Internet & Flickr in particular was a lifesaver, seeing those notifications pop up that someone had commented on my pictures was a god send a link to the real world. I am stuck in bed just now, merely with the lurgy but am reminded yet again why I love Flickr.

Off to good homes

Well it's been a funny old start to the year. Totally over committing again but if I haven't overcome that character trait by the ripe old age of 49 then I never will.
I finished the baby quilt, really pleased with it.

I've given away quite a few quilts, this being one of the latest. It was from the sew happy geek quilt along from last year.

I love it when a quilt goes to a nice home.