Catching Up
It feels as though I have been away for a long time. Finally, my work is all current and finally, Spring has arrived here, and finally, I can allow myself to think creatively again. It feels great!

The Needle Samplers are a big hit. We have been hearing from you (the actual uses of them) and not only are they a great educational tool, they are a perfect for a small “thank you” or “just because” gifts, and they are handy as a travel pack for take-along sewing projects.

Winter has ended at last. The trees are beginning to blossom and leaf out. Because of our high altitude and cool climate we are slower to see spring than many areas of the country. Recently we have made several trips to the nursery to buy more trees, berry bushes, rose bushes, vegetable starts, perennials, and seeds. This large property seems to swallow up all of our new purchases and it still looks empty. Some day it will be beautiful, but for now we are nursing along baby plants and visualizing grandeur sometime in the distant future. To brighten the front porch and bring results more quickly I have planted a couple of clay pots with geraniums, asparagus ferns, and alyssum. We will enjoy them all summer as we rock on the porch and enjoy the peace and quiet of this place.
Creatively, I’ve been thinking about album quilts again and currently have a group of twenty-five students eagerly working along with me on a series of designs based loosely on the classic album quilts from Baltimore. Since the plan is to include 30 different blocks, each month of this year-long class brings two to three new patterns. It is quite a pace we have set but a good share of the students are keeping up. They are a great group.

I have a confession to make about myself and my quilts. The joy for me in my quilts is in the journey/process, not owning a finished quilt. I love working on my quilts and watching them grow under my hands. They become old friends. If you think about it, they are a piece of you after having been a part of many days in your life. In fact, I delay finishing favorite quilts when I near the final stitches because our time together is ending.

For example, Great Expectations, the cover quilt on my Forget-Me-Knots book has been 95% hand quilted for over two years and yet I have not been able to bring myself to finish it.
For me, making quilts is a bit like raising children. You do your best to help your children become the people they want to be, but the final step of being a good parent is letting go—and that is hard. However, this quilt is a beautiful piece and I would hate to see it in an unfinished state forever, so I have squared my shoulders and I am working faithfully on it every day. It will be finished in a couple of weeks.
On the bright side, the prospect of the completion of Great Expectations is softened by future projects. I do have the new album quilt to think about and I am now ready to start hand quilting the Virtues quilt. New possibilities on the horizon are good.























