The Secret Exchange

A few years ago I met a professional quilter online who over time has become a good friend. She proposed we do a craft exchange this year, and I got brave enough to accept. We decided to do medium size projects, and I thought I'd make her a recycled linen nap size quilt. That's what I was working on for the month of February and part of March.

The pattern is called Wave Runner by Cozy Designs, and was fairly simple to put together. I stayed with a three-color design using these remnants for the top so I could make the waves in the colors of sand, sea and snow. I used a variety of embroidery threads to quilt the piece, from #3 cotton perle to some of that ball thread I picked up in a bag from Goodwill. The poem that I wrote and embroidered on the quilt is all about my friend (and in a way, me back when I was writing PBW.)

Everything I used to make the quilt was what I had on hand, recycled or leftover from other projects. Even the tag I put on the quilt is a piece of white fabric from Fabscrap. It's not perfect, of course, but I'm quite proud of how it turned out. I'm also not going to post a pic of the finished quilt because what I wrote on it is very personal.

For her project my friend made me this beautiful beach bag. It's not only perfectly made, but in my favorite colors with a lovely bird so much like those we see when we walk by the lakes.

My friend is a little psychic, too. I think it's safe to say that whatever happens to me, I do refuse to sink.

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Love Means This

Invested in a couple of hand-dyed bundles from one of my favorite fabric artists. This one said "Make me into something for Valentine's Day." So I went for a quilted and embellished tote. I kept thinking about what love means to me as I worked on it. Here's the finished tote. Although I was tempted to embellish with beads and pins, I got sick and only felt well enough to do a little stitching every night. As I worked I thought about how often love seems disappointing to us, especially when it fails to live up to our expectations. But now that I've experienced love in many forms, I can say that it's made me a better person than I might have been without it. Love is a precious thing, and should be appreciated in all its forms. I am very grateful for the love of my guy, my child and my friends who have stuck with me all these years. That's you two, in case you're wondering. :) Also finally found something to do with a ve...

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Store Closing Haul

The mega Books-A-Million store over in Sanford is closing, and offered an extra 20% off on their current stock -- all sales final -- so I went over to do some shopping. Safely but sadly there was no one in the store but me the entire time I was there. The Holly Jackson novel is for Katherine, the Halloween board book is for Oliver, and the copy of Garden Spells is to keep on hand because I give that book to everyone. The rest of the books are for me. I love Anne Cleeves, and the Galbraith novel sounded interesting (the first couple weren't, but I'm willing to take another chance.) The Escape Room is by a new-to-me author, plus it was cheap. The GreenCraft mag is just a guilty pleasure. Hopefully the smaller BAM nearer to me won't close. I don't buy many books from brick-and-mortar stores these days, but that's really the last one within reasonable driving distance.

Valerean

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