What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

A little humor first thing in the morning is like a little gift of joy.  So I was thrilled when my friend sent me this video.  Too funny and exactly the sort of thing my mother used to send to me.  She would have loved this.  This one's for you Mom.  Please know this is silly and meant to be funny.  If you don't find it so, move right along. [video width="848" height="480" mp4="https://arianezurcher.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/IMG_0500.mp4"][/video] In other news, my new workshop line up for 2022 is up ...

Yesterday I released a new Youtube Video with the same title. Go check it out! There are a few other key factors to interpretive hand stitching, improvisational hand stitching, expressionist hand stitching or whatever else you might want to call it.  I think all of these are good descriptors of my process when taking a […]

So here’s the thing…  I feel a whole lot better when I show up even when I feel awful, even when I feel things are rough and I’m tired, even when I don’t want to.  I’ve also learned that showing up anyway is the single best remedy for not continuing to feel that way. Except […]

In 2015 or was it 2016(?) things were in flux. I was re-evaluating what I was doing, where I was headed, what I wanted…  There were a number of things going on that led to this, but it was one of those moments that didn’t seem particularly extraordinary or even interesting, but in hindsight I […]

“We are what we repeatedly do, therefore, excellence is not an act but a habit.” Aristotle I always think about repetition when I’m stitching.  Stitching a few french knots?  How about a few hundred?  And what about some bullion circles?  A whole cluster of them is even better! In nature repetition is a constant and […]

Today’s morning reading excerpt: “While you don’t control external events, you retain the ability to decide how you respond to those events. You control what every external event means to you personally.” The Daily Stoic When we returned from Africa, I had a livestream scheduled for the next day and a Zoom meeting that couldn’t […]

First things first… Pat Pauly!  I just posted my interview with Pat Pauly on my YouTube channel.  For those of you who may not be familiar with Pat, she is a brilliant, multi-talented artist, who also hand paints and dyes fabrics that she sells on her website, is a sought after teacher and does the […]

First day seeing an animal (any animal): Me: What is that?  It looks like a boar.  Runs to find someone who can accurately identify said boar.  Told it’s a warthog.   Second time seeing boar-like creature: Me: Oh look! It’s a warthog. Confidently lists several features of the warthog; it’s preferred vegetation, which animals prey upon it, etc. First day […]

There are moments that feel impossible and others that fly by unnoticed. Mostly I’m exhausted almost constantly, as though a perpetual scrim has enveloped me, making everything feel heavier, cloudier, more difficult to sort through. It’s not terrible, just different. This is grief, I’m told. This morning is one of those heavier moments. Maybe it’s […]

Paula Zurcher: November 27th, 1928 - August 27th, 2021 Photograph by John Kelly

It’s impossible not to contemplate the genocide that ravaged this country, when more than one million people were massacred in 100 days. Think about that. Resulting in a collective trauma that is still felt by so many to this day. It was a brutal time demonstrating the worst aspects of colonialism and the racism that […]

Off we go on our grand adventure to Africa tomorrow! Here is a little recap of the last 24 hours… Yesterday: Wake up to find we have been sent a notification from the airlines that our flight has been cancelled. Wait, what?!??? My heart skips a beat, a precursor to the flood of panic that […]

As it turns out the bobbin winder on my new Bernina is broken. Silly me, thinking I could wind the bobbin upside down, I didn’t realize this until it was too late, and it did us both in. Off to the shop it will go, but in the meantime, I continue to fine tune my […]

There are still spaces left for The Basics Workshop! This workshop is for any and all who want to learn basic design concepts, techniques, stitches and have lots and lots of fun. Hurry and sign up now before it fills up. I did a livestream for my Patrons yesterday using my newly organized space and […]

When COVID hit New York City over a year ago now, death was no longer an abstract idea. People we knew were getting really, really sick, a few of them died, a few are still not 100%. When the mobil morgue parked just blocks away from our building to handle the overflow of dead bodies, […]

I’ve been traveling. Though I must say that though this trip to visit my mother and sister is a long one, involving connections and then an hour and a half drive, it was about as flawless and easy as traveling can be during these bizarre times. First off, the La Guardia Airport has done an […]

As I mentioned in my last post, I put my hand stitching aside in order to take a Pat Pauly virtual workshop. It was all about line, setting, composition and boy did she pack a lot into those two days. So much fun! I’m not a quilter. I just have to say that. I mean […]

Someone commented on my Youtube channel about messiness, saying that she was happy my work area isn’t pristine as that would be intimidating. And it made me think about the various stages of messiness. The gradient scale of messiness, because this is important.   1. Kind of “messy”, but it’s not a problem and anyway to […]

Dedicated to all of you who are in areas of the world where the heat is the only topic anyone’s talking about. From the south there’s this one: “It’s hotter’n a blister bug in a pepper patch.” And this one: It’s so dang hot, I just saw a hound dog chasing a rabbit and they […]

My mother hasn’t sent me anything in a few days other than requests for rain, which I’ve done my best to accommodate, but I only have so much reach when it comes to the weather. Speaking of which, it’s in the upper nineties here in New York City for the next couple of days and […]