It’s Raining Quilts!

Here in Crete, we have two seasons, Winter and Summer. Yes, we get hints of Spring and Fall, but once either of those mellow seasons begins, the harsher one is ready to take over. This week, we are seeing Winter coming upon us quite a few weeks earlier than normal. I don’t like the cold, but I love the rainy season that marks my Winters here. I absolutely adore rain! The harder the better, and if thunder and lightning are involved, I am in complete bliss!

When the weather is gloomy, I love to be in my sewing room, preferably making quilts. Something about creating in my snug space while the weather rages outside is so comforting to me! I’ve made some of my best quilts during bad weather.

This year, now that my sewing room is ready for all the messes I can conceive of to create, I am anxious to get in there! Patchwork for making quilts. Long-arm quilting. Machine embroidery. There are so many things to choose from!

I used to not like to do machine embroidery during the storms because we lose power a lot. Now that I am fully immersed in embroidery quilting, which can be very in-depth and tricky, it would be a shame if the power went out in the middle of something. So, like my computer, I now have my embroidery machine plugged into a UPS (universal power supply). This gives me 10 minutes to get my stuff done or saved. Lovely!

The wind is blowing and storm clouds are in the sky, making the blue that is still visible even more vivid. The white, puffy clouds are standing their ground, trying to hold on for another week or so. This is a time when I hope that the dark wins out over the light!

It’s funny that I hope for the dark, rainy season. I suffer from SAD (seasonal affective disorder), which is when a person’s moods and health are affected by a lack of sunlight. If I spend too much time in the rest of the house, the weather does affect me. But, in the sewing room, all is right with the world.

When making quilts, it is important to have good light for choosing our colors and fabrics. There are full-spectrum lamps out there that do a good job of recreating natural light in the small scale. Unfortunately, I don’t work in the small scale, so I needed a whole-room solution. For a total of $20, I bought a cheap 4’ shop light and two fluorescent bulbs. I chose one cool tube (burns in a blue or pink hue) and one warm bulb (burns in a yellow hue). The mixture of these two bulbs creates a facsimile of natural light. And the 4’ shop light on my ceiling spreads this light all over my largish sewing room. Fantastic!

So, when the weather is gloomy outside, I can make an excuse for my health and escape to my sewing room for hours of blissful quilting and machine embroidery! No one bothers me for several hours, and I come out happy and peaceful.

So, rain, rain, don’t go away. Come again. Today!

Machine Embroidery Made Fun and Faster

The past couple of days I’ve been railing at fate and grinning ruefully. I always have several deadlines for machine embroidery or that entail making quilts. This month, I was on time! In fact, I was a bit ahead of time and looking forward to submitting my final projects with time to spare.

I took a quick nap the other day after getting up early to deliver my friend’s dog to her at the airport for their trip home. When I woke up, I had a massive charlie-horse in … well … my nether region. Uncomfortable, but not bad. Within a couple of hours, though, it was apparent that I had sustained a groin-pull in my sleep! This is more than uncomfortable. It is also embarrassing in my house where I am the only female. The girl cats just aren’t any help with this! Luckily, we’ve always been pretty open about things in this household, or I would be hobbling around trying to hide my chagrin and pretending that all is well. Instead, my son volunteered to clean the litter boxes!

Since sitting is the best position for me, I’ve been spending a lot of time on the computer. The computer portions of my deadlines are completed so I went back to my archive files to see what I could see. It seems I started writing a book on foundation piecing, one of my favorite techniques, several years ago. Next year, I will be providing these types of designs for embroidery quilting, so I’ve been spending lots of time cataloguing things. I am planning for these to be free embroidery designs and I want them to be very special.

Even the most dedicated fiber artist can get bored when unlimited time is available. So, I’ve also been surfing the web (I almost drowned the one time I tried real surfing) and finding some great information on new quilting supplies, fun projects for machine embroidery, and lots and lots of temptations to buy, buy, buy! The only thing I did buy was a new accounting program since the one I’m using is over 10 years old. How is that for boring! Of course, my office is now set up in an alcove in the living room since our son returned to Crete, and the hubs sits on the couch not too far behind me. Something about online shopping while he watches me just doesn’t feel right. I have nothing to hide, but I like shopping in private!

But, my thoughts are now full of new projects to try! There are some wonderful hanger covers for those delicate items we love or to keep things from sliding off the hangers. I also found several collapsible grocery bags that might actually make me remember to take my bags with me to the store. Several beautiful throw pillows, and the embroidery software tricks to make them easy, are swirling in my grey matter, too!

Now that I want to be stitching, and really do need to anyway, I am determined to hobble into the studio today! I will ignore my full size cutting board and ironing station. Instead, I will lay out the table next to my machine with my portable ironing board and small cutting board that I use for classes. I normally hop up and down out of my chair when creating, but for today, I will sit and do everything. I’ll be genteel and ladylike!

Anyone want to take bets that I’ll forget, hop up too fast, and immediately yell obscenities?