What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

I know there are successful “Sort Your Life Out” experts out there but I have to say that I find decluttering exhausting. I can’t swing a cat in my workshop and Freya might be bringing the contents of her flat here so I am trying to clear out some of the stuff that I don’t actually “need”. I have been listing a few things on Facebook Marketplace but there are a lot of scammers and chancers to look out for. I sold a nice, red formica table and stools that I loved but they were not being used ...

Regular readers of the blog will know that every now and then I enjoy a bit of organisation, usually spurred by procrastination. Previously, I have read Marie Kondo’s book about how your belongings should “Spark Joy” and I have briefly folded my clothes accordingly until I can’t be bothered anymore. The problem is that I have a reasonably capacious old house and a love of junk shops, and if I am honest, could be a bit of a hoarder. 

The term “Swedish Death Cleaning” has piqued my interest – the idea that you should start clearing out your belongings ...

Yet again, I have had a week when what I was meant to be doing (on paper) was not what I ended up doing, not that those things were not valid in their own way;) I did get 2 customer quilts done before Nella pointed out that she would like to spend some time with me in the last week of her Easter hols. The custom quilt had to have a few thread tails sewn in and the red flying-geese one was a bit of a challenge because the customer wanted the echo quilting to look exactly as it did ...

I have huge admiration for people who get up super early and crack on with their days. I wake up early in order to make a cup of tea to take back to bed then waste time reading the news, checking social media and browsing Ebay for vintage cameras that I don’t need. If I could get my days off to a brisker start then maybe I would find time to keep on top of my To Do list or even make some more Lego plants. 

In my defence, this week I have had some late nights, spending time ...

No need to be alarmed – the title does not refer to a sad music album that I have written! It has been a week when I seem to have lost and broken more things than usual. I hunted high and low for some Swiss Army knives, blaming everyone else in the house for hoarding them then eventually found them at the back of a drawer where I had put them. When I was unspooling some thread off a Bernina bobbin it jumped out of my hand and disappeared under a really awkward cupboard. I looked everywhere for a quilt that ...

I spent a lot of my week testing out the Tech that I needed to use to do my Zoom lecture and demo for the Scottish branch of the Quilters Guild of the British Isles. I was using the MacBook Air that I got from Music Magpie and a usbc hub since the MacAir hardly has any ports where you can plug in gadgets. It turns out that there is more than one version of a basic usb port! I wanted to use 2 Camlinks in order to livestream images from my 2 GoPro cameras but they needed a faster ...

I'm comforted knowing that I'm not alone in this decluttering journey! How is it possible that we've allowed ourselves to accumulate so much clutter - physical things or digital assets. Oh well --- we'll get through it!

No one will care a single thing about my computer once I'm gone. No one would dig through those photos, and no one would need or want my old email. I only do this to make room for MORE on my computer and make it easier to find what I have! Then perhaps I could actually do stuff with my ...

While my kids were still at school, Life was pretty busy, getting them to where they needed to be, running a business and entering quilt competitions but at least there was a schedule. These days, I don’t have many time commitments so I can please myself how much work I do. The trouble is that I make myself try to get too much done, all at once, so I hardly ever allow myself any down-time. I felt so harassed that I dug out a planner that I used to have in 2019 up until Life came to a grinding ...

I was 56 on Monday which means it is almost 16 years since I started blogging! I have been thinking… do I have a good work / life balance? Am I creating enough? Am I having fun? Does any of it even matter?! I certainly don’t seem to travel as much, mostly due to Nessie, costs and probably the state of the world. I am trying to be more focussed as I am easily distracted and that can be overwhelming.  

I “allowed” myself some time off for my birthday and had a lovely lunch out with a friend but I ...

Merry Christmas to everyone! Thanks to all of you for supporting me in so many ways this past year (OK -- that's something I should say on New Year's Day), but I appreciate all the comments and feedback and know that many of you read the blog over morning coffee! No pressure on me to face an empty computer screen every morning and drum up something! I LOVE it! 

I hope that your day is whatever you want it to be. Our day has always been quiet - no big families or groups of friends to celebrate with. And there ...

It's amazing what a little FOCUS can do in a day! I have awesome photos to share with you, and I am so excited! 

I'm not sure if it helped, but I listened to an audiobook and listened to the entire thing from start to finish yesterday -- about 7 hours. The book is called Counting the Cost by Jill Dugger. I found the book fascinating - not because of who the author was. I've never watched a single episode of their shows and know nothing about them. 

There were two things I took away from this book -- the ...

Nessie and I travelled back to Scotland by train which is a long way with a dog on your lap, sometimes the floor. She was very good, especially at Edinburgh Waverley where we had 10 minutes to change platforms. Thistle (Fizz) was delighted to see me and was especially pleased that she could get access to my bed. Meanwhile my room had been turned into a recording studio and Nella’s room seemed to have been filled with the junk that everyone else had decided they no longer wanted in their rooms. It seems that I will have some serious ...

At the start of the year I declared that I would like to be fitter but I confess that I have done nothing about it. However, this week I had quite the quilting workout. Liz and Frances were here with an impressive collection of quilts. We had both machines going doing freehand and computerised quilting, using up more than a full roll of wadding. The results were super:)

The other thing that had me dashing about was having a bit of a clearout – I had some success selling a few things on Facebook Marketplace and Vinted which has spurred me ...

Unless I have a list to cross off, I feel as though I have achieved nothing in Life. That list can include walk / brush dog just so I feel I have earned the right to exist in the world. Of course, the Universe could not give a toss whether I make my bed, water my plants or brush my hair…

I completed the experimental non-slip sofa cover which does a pretty good job. The red is nowhere near the shade of the original sofa which needs a really deep treatment of leather cream. Now, I should really make another one ...

After a weekend of torrential rain, the sun finally came back out on Monday and started drying everything out. Luckily, no water flooded into my workshop this time. The river was incredibly high when Nessie and I went for a walk. Instead of being a once in 20 years occurrence, it seems to happen annually now. 

I set myself ups for a busy week, knowing that I am going to Norfolk later this week. I did some online teaching, in person teaching and a couple of customer quilts. 

In a phone conversation with a Bernina Q-matic owner, she mentioned that ...

Despite my Q-matic system being a bit temperamental since it needs a new cable, I managed to keep it going and completed some customer quilts. I had to watch it more closely than usual so I was not able to go away and work on anything else, although I did manage to put a few stitches onto the quilted coat back. I have 2 front pieces still to go, depending on how much embellishment I feel it needs.

I decided to take my caravan on a Last Hurrah for the year to head north to Moray for a Scottie Dog ...

The lingering cold that I had after my Glasgow trip turned out to be Covid. I was not especially unwell but lacking in energy and had no sense of taste. I hunkered down in the workshop and just got on with some quilting. It was not that easy actually, because my machine keeps conking out and giving me error messages which I tell it to ignore before starting again. New wiring has been ordered which should arrive in mid-October so hopefully we will keep limping along. 

I received a letter from Police Scotland informing me that I was caught by ...

This week was rather busy as I got myself organised to teach 2 workshops in Glasgow. I had 3 customer quilts to complete, hand-outs to prepare and some samples to produce. I drew several examples of quilting designs and laminated them until my aged laminator decided to swallow some whole. I tried taking it apart but I decided it was a lost cause. I think in future I might actually stitch the examples as well for reference. 

I stopped in Dundee on the way to Glasgow to visit the Tartan Exhibition at the V&A. It was a really diverse ...

After another epic drive north I spent the next day trying to get reorganised. My workshop could do with a big sort out but I am trying to remind myself that it does not all need to be done at once. Indeed, the universe does not even care whether I do it at all. I have a mega customer quilt to get done before I leave to teach 2 groups in Glasgow next week. It was frustrating that the Qmatic system kept stopping with an error message that there was a problem with the sewhead. On closer inspection, I discovered ...

My main mission for the week was to catch up with customer quilts that I had not done in the lead up to FoQ. I like to keep on top of them as I find having a queue of quilts a bit stressful!

True to my word, I have been making an effort to test out my cameras so I get to learn all of their features. It does not mean that I have necessarily made any decisions to trade any of them in but the exercise has been worthwhile to become more familiar with them. I have also tried ...