Mindful Quilting

I first spotted Elli Beaven's Quilting ~ 20 Mindful Makes to Reconnect Head, Heart & Hands while browsing around the thrift sites. While I prefer to buy reading for pleasure books used, I buy sewing and quilting books new to show support for other textile artists. No one ever gets rich writing these, honestly, and I admire the authors for teaching others what they do.

The book is compact and well-written, and the projects are largely small and practical, like this cushion. There are some quilts, one of which I'm seriously tempted to make, but none that I think are too hard for a confident sewist.

The author talks about mindfulness in quilting, and encourages the reader to repurpose fabrics, collect and reuse textile waste, and try their own variations and ideas with the projects, all of which I love. Elli also gives a nice crash course in the basic techniques of quilting (including hand stitching) before getting into the projects.

I'm going to try a few of the smaller projects once my hands are in better shape (and maybe that quilt, too.) I think Elli Beaven is the perfect guide if you want to embrace mindfulness, slow stitch and enjoy more the journey of quilting.

Comments

Old Loves & Such

My guy kindly bought me my favorite Chinese take out the other night, and my fortune cookie offered up an interesting story starter: This sounds sweet, right? Only the first thing I thought of was an old love coming back from the dead . . . . must be October. In other lovely news, my favorite hand-dyed thread artist, Lorraine from Colour Complements , is moving her business from Etsy to her own web site. Many of my favorite sellers on Etsy are leaving due to the whole "free shipping" coercion debacle, which has also soured me on the site. To show support I did a little shopping at Lorraine's web site and got in these: I love her threads and trims; you simply can't buy anything like them anywhere. Her work makes my specialty thread box look like a treasure chest: At night I'm spending just as hour working on quilting the scrap project runner, and I'm making slow progress: I'll keep quilting the runner while I try to decide on a design for t...

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...

Progress

My guy is back home safe, sound and exhausted. I think he just realized he's over seventy now. :) I didn't finish a sewing project while he was gone, but I did make some progress on the beach bag. I've tacked down all the fabric elements on top of the old backing fabric I quilted. Time to break out the embroidery thread box and have some fun.

Valerean

Search This Blog