A Balanced Life?

I am taking a personal finance class that is being offered through my church's Self Reliance program.  (For those of you who don't know I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. And we are very big on being self reliant) I decided to take this 12 week course because I figure I will never have my quilt shop if I don't get my personal finances under control. Once I get them under control I can start look at taking the starting and growing a small business class.  

This class is spiritually based as well as temporally based. In other words we also deal with the spiritual side of finances.  Not just handling money but setting priorities.  There is a gospel foundation principle every week. One week it was counseling with the Lord about our finances. Another week it was paying tithes and offerings. This week's foundation principle is Living a Balanced Life.  In other words getting your priorities straight. Not all work and not all play. Time with Family.

What a challenge to get right as peanut season is starting up.  Top that off with kicking off another segment of my project and I am one busy lady at work.  I haven't worked less than 9 hours in the past 2 weeks, except for the 2 days I had to leave early due to my asthma.  I definitely don't feel like I am living a balanced life. 

Part of the weekly challenge is picking things to work on to live the principle. I have long felt that I never have enough time to do what I love (quilt, sew and craft). It would have been really easy to go that route. Carve out time for myself. But after a little reflection I came to believe that was not truly a good priority. So I re-evaluated.  I chose to spend time with the grand children. By that I mean doing something meaningful, not just letting them entertain themselves.  Another one I chose was to spend time with my kids and not hole up in my room.

Now the tricky part was going to be how to do that and still get some quilting in. Yesterday, I started involving Rorie in quilting. Rorie is 3 years old and pretty smart for her age. We decided her baby doll needed a quilt. I have a bunch of 4 inch squares that I have gathered over the years.  I let Rorie go through them and pick out the ones she liked. After going through them, she chose all of them, I needed to redirect her. Since her favorite color is pink, we went through the blocks again and started pulling out the ones with pink in them. Then Rorie sprayed them with starch and I pressed them. it was a bit of a sticky mess. We have 61 pink print blocks and 61 neutral print blocks ready to start sewing.  Later this week, (when I get home from work and she is here) we will start sewing pink blocks to neutral blocks. Rorie is really excited about this project and by doing it in bites, she will stay engaged in it. 

As for my other quilting projects, I am currently marking the layer cake for the second Ribbon Dance Quilt.  I ended up buying a new ruler to do it.  This ruler is 3 inches by 18 inches. It is long enough to go diagonally across the layer cake. It is short enough to make it easier to handle in tight spaces. I had one but I can't find it.  Emerson has been rearranging my studio again.  I just need him to understand my organizational style. Then maybe him putting things away will not be so traumatic for me. He likes to put things up but not where I want them. He tends to move things around in my studio to suit his likes. So I am missing some things. I need to clean up the studio again anyway, so I am sure I will find them.

That is about it for this week.  I have some homework to do for my class and I am behind.  I need to get on top of it.  Are you living a balanced life? What can you do to bring more balance to your life?

Still Recovering

I have not done much in the way of quilting this week.  I didn't get home until very late Wednesday night and well I have been trying to catch up everywhere. But I did save a little bit about my trip for this week's blog.

I was in the Reno area last week and there are three or four quilt shops in the Reno area. Unfortunately, I was not able to get to any of them. That actually may have been a blessing. I tend to lose what little common sense I have in Quilt shops that I might not ever get back to. I did however get to visit a very small quilt shop in Winnemucca. The name of the quilt shop was Mad Hatter Quilt Shoppe. You can find thier facebook page here.

It was a very small shop and very friendly. There weren't a whole lot of quilts hanging up in the store. Nor was there a huge inventory of fabric. The fabric that they did have was very pleasing and I wish could have bought some of all of it. There was plenty to make several different quilts just not as much as some bigger quilt shops. Like I said it is a small store. But the atmosphere was friendly and inviting.  The store has open sew on Tuesdays and about every other Saturday. That is something that is very appealing to me. I miss having women close by to sew with. They also offer classes and very often the classes are on Saturday, Which is great for working women. If I didn't work I couldn't quilt. Of course because I do work I have precious little time to quilt. Classes on Saturday would be awesome.

The first quilt I noticed was on a design wall in the classroom.  It was a stunning quilt that the owner had started in a guild meeting sew along.  The pattern was simple but the fabrics used were stunning. The pattern is Lily by Jessica Darling and can be found at VillaRosaDesigns.com. A modified log cabin quilt that is really cute.  In this case the fabric choices were what made the quilt, at least for me. She used gold and brown batiks and a off white solid. I would have bought the pattern but she didn't have anymore in stock. So she gave me hers.  I will make this quilt and will most likely make it in batiks. I will have to be careful about the color selection to get a quilt as stunning as hers.

 I did buy two quilt kits.  One was a panel kit, I am a sucker for outdoor prints and this was a beautiful panel with deer on it. The accompanying fabrics were very outdoorsy prints that I fell in love with. In fact I bought some extra fat quarters of four coordinating prints. The quilt is just a throw size but I will probably make it into a wall hanging. The pattern is Log Cabin Trees Panel by CastillejaConttons.com. The fabric are from the Northcott Fabrics High Ridge Crossing Collection. Here is a picture of the panel.
I have lived in the mountains of Utah and have camped in the mountains of Idaho. So this panel reminds me of those times.

The other kit that I bought is for a bigger quilt. Finished, it should be 82 x 98.  The pattern is by Nancy Rink Designs and is called A New Age.  It features the "New Age Muslin" fabrics by Marcus Fabrics. This quilt kit is a block of the month kit. The shop owner said that she learned something new with each block. So that really appealed to me.

When I opened the kit. I was really surprised to find the pattern and fabric for each block in it's own separate bag. I realize that it was for a block of the month but I've done a couple of those before and I didn't get the blocks in separate bags.



The fabrics in this kit are neutral solids. I went with the light background. It has a southwest feel to it. I am eager to start this quilt as well.


So if you are ever in the Winnemucca area stop into Mad Hatter Quilt Shoppe. If nothing else you will have a nice chat with the owner. But you just might see your next project.

Speaking of the next project, I guess I need to take inventory of my kits and see which will be the next one.  I have a quite a few and even though I think I know what quilt I am going to do next, another one pops up.  It is a never ending cycle.

For now I am going to work on the second ribbon dance quilt and focus on that. I need to have it done by the end of November.

What's your next project? Do you buy kits? How many project do you have lined up?

Time Away

This week's blog is a little late in coming out. I have been out west the past few days.  My husband and I went to bless our newest granddaughter. This little sweetie is just two months old and managed to capture our hearts. I am so happy we got to go meet little Winry.

We spent the rest of the time spoiling her and her big sister, Viri.  And spoil them we did. In fact, Viri told her Mother that Grumpy will buy her everything. This sad little girl did not want her Grumpy to leave.  It was so hard to leave them behind.

While we were visiting, there was a small tri-county fair. We went and had a good time seeing the entries and going on rides.  For an area that has two quilt guilds, I was surprised that there weren't more quilts entered. I counted 11 quilts, 2 table runners, and 2 wall hangings.  We all had a favorite quilts.  Arianna's was the giraffe quilt.

I liked the start quilt, although the colors were a little subdued for my usual tastes. the colors still worked together well. I also liked the actual quilting. It was a pantograph in a very pretty star and swirl pattern. 

I also liked this Christmas quilt. This strip quilt that reminded me of a one sided log cabin had little fussy cut squares that had birds on them. The rich colors really grabbed your attention.

Perigrine pointed out this very colorful wall hanging that looked like it may have been paper pieced. The dark background and bright multi-colored rings were really awesome. I especially liked how the rings went right off the edge,

But Perigrine, Arianna and I all agreed this last quilt was the most stunning. Of course I didn't get a really good picture of it but I am including it anyway.  This medallion quilt may not have been perfectly pieced but it was very impressive.  When I say it was not perfectly pieced, I am being very judgmental.  We were inspecting the quilt to see how it was put together and what fabrics they used. We saw some very tiny matching errors. Nothing I would ever have noticed if we hadn't been trying to figure out the pattern.  I wish they had listed the pattern name on the entry description.


The last two items I saw were not in the quilting section.  These were listed in recycling.  They appeared to be small quilt tops that were never finished.  One was a crazy quilt that was put in a frame. The other was a bow tie quilt that was put in an old window frame.  I thought that this was an excellent idea for projects that didn't quite get finished or you inherit from someone else.

 I think this was an excellent idea for those non-quilters who have small quilt tops that need finished. Or even a quilter who didn't like the pattern enough to do a whole quilt.

With fair season going all over I encouraged you all to go see the quilts and get some inspiration.