Label it .... you own it...!

I hope you have all had a wonderful Labour Day Weekend. Myself, I ended up going in to Fibre Junction and working on the website, imputing Lecien Cosmo floss.  What a job!

Today, owning a small business requires lots of skills that I am positive our foremothers did not have to acquire. Anyway, by 3:30 p.m. I was crossed eyed and had to call it a day! Yea, I popped opened a bottle of wine and had a glass! Cheers!

I'm still on this "finish UFO" mode and completed Vintage Holiday - a Jo Morton quilt.

Not only did I finish the quilt but ..... I actually took Ancient Bernie out!

And ... Seriously, aren't you proud of me? lol

All of a sudden .... "SQUIRREL" .... and off I went into another direction, creating labels for completed quilts!  So far I have six (6) labels stitched out and sewn on .... Sigh! Not that it's a bad thing but ....

Focus Carole ... focus .... just focus ... back to completing UFOs!

It's a done deal ....!

The mystery quilt has been delivered! For the curious ones, the recipient was my mum!

I think she was a tad happy to receive it. Her eyes teared up ... it's a good sign! I love my mum to pieces!

I managed to capture this photo of the both of us. I love how it turned out!

I will admit, it feels great to get a UFO project completed! It takes the weight off one's shoulders. I would strongly recommend that you take an inventory of your UFOs. Make a list .... here is how I designed my quilt project sheet ...

Then, get rid of the ones you are no longer passionate about ... I write down where the quilt project went. This way I have a record of what happened to that project.

For those curious about the machine quilting on my mum's quilt, I did an edge to edge ....

Used Hobbs 100% wool batting. I will admit, I'm loving wool! It's light .... and oh so comfy! I now use wool batting for all my winter quilts (and for some I give away) and cotton for the others. What is your choice of batting?

Thanks for stopping by! Catch you later!

Forever is not for us mere mortals ....!

As I mentioned in a prior post, lots of changes are taking place in my life. I've been working on a new me ... it's a work in progress! As part of this new me, I've been taking better care of myself, which includes ... physical exercise.

Yesterday afternoon was humid and hot (we did have a bit of rain). Focusing on my goal, I managed to find the motivation to go for my power walk/jog. OMG, it was brutal! There were some sort of flies/large gnats all over the place. I had never seen a swarm of pesky dipteran like those in my area! They were all over the place, making it difficult to dodge them. I definitely jogged with my mouth closed! Not sure they were the edible kind! But .... I did it! Hoory for me! Hopefully, tonight these pesky little flies will no longer be around.

On another note, not wanting to sound morbid, but lately, I have become more aware of my mortality. I'm not getting any younger and have this need to clean out or finish off quilting projects.

I remember a story that a past guild president shared with us regarding her deceased mother's quilting projects. She had inherited the task of finishing her mother's UFOs. This task weighed heavily on her. Sadly, no one knew if her mother's UFOs were quilts she was passionate about or just something she couldn't bare to throw out! Here she was, pressured to spent valuable time finishing quilt projects that were her mothers. This is not something I would want my little Pumpkin or my friends to undertake.

Last Saturday, I took an inventory of all my UFOs (I do keep a yearly Word document of my quilting projects started) and decided that I needed to either complete the projects on the list or get rid of them. I wouldn't want to leave a mess for someone else to clean.

So, I'm cleaning and working on the quilts I want to finish and getting rid of the ones I no longer want ...  And, some quilts will just have to become smaller projects!

I will admit, it is difficult to get rid of a project when the blocks are all done, it's just a matter of sewing them together and putting the border on! Here is my first project.

Well, I best be getting busy! Enjoy your day everyone! Cheers!

Allowing my wisdom to shine ...!

There are a lot of changes taking place in my life. It is true what they say, as you get older what was important in your youth seems to take a back seat. All of a sudden, your priorities change and your life heads in a new direction.

I've never been one to be on a straight life path ... I like an adventure .... I've taken quite a few "wrong" turns, so to speak, some conscious and some unconscious .... okay maybe that would be "consciously ignoring the signs!" lol  Still .... life is good!

A recent new change for me is that I have decided to no longer hide my wisdom. No more trips to the hair salon for hair colouring!

It is taking quite some time for my "wisdom" to flourish! lol So far, I seem to have the patience for the process to complete itself.

On the quilting front .... I am in a completion mode. I've been tackling UFOs and cleaning out stuff I am no longer passionate about.

I have FINALLY finished the mystery quilt I blogged about here. Penelope and I spent some quality time together on Monday! ;)

The binding is sewn on, now it's a question of finishing the hand stitching ... another of my favourite part of quilting. I will admit, there isn't much about the quilting process that I don't enjoy. How about you?

Thank you for stopping by. Enjoy your day! Cheers!

What's your passion?

I've pretty much caught up on the machine quilting and binding of all the projects I have written about. Hurry for me. What this also means is that I've been taking a break from quilting and ... catching up on my reading.

I don't know why, but I find it difficult to balance work with other activities that I enjoy, like reading and journaling. Seems I put a lot of pressure on myself to get samples done for the shoppe. Sigh!

Life is a balancing act and sometimes I'm not well balanced .... leaning way to much towards the work side. So this summer, I've taken upon myself to sit and read a book at least an hour a day. It's been a great summer .... much to nice to be sitting indoors with the a/c on, thus making it easy for me to keep to my goal.

A book I enjoyed tremendously was Big Magic - Creative living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat Pray Love, which I have not read)

I loved it!  Just what I needed!

In a nut shell, it is about creating for the sake of creating. Does everything you create have to have a purpose? Must make money for you? If you enjoy writing, write ... who cares if it gets published or not! What is important is that you are enjoying the process!  And if you want to publish your work, do so!

There is a quote that struck a cord with me. In finding your passion, the question is not, "what are you passionate about?" But more like "What are you passionate enough about that you are willing to endure the most disagreeable aspect of the work?" That's the part I'm stuck on!

One thing I know for sure is that I am passionate about my quilt shoppe Fibre Junction, however I am also passionate about life. I am curious by nature. I learned that I needed to not only set boundaries between creating for Fibre and creating for myself, but to maintain those boundaries.

I enjoy reading and journaling, something I had not done in a very long time. Happily, I've picked it back up and enjoying every minute of it.

What are you passionate about? Are you living a balanced life?

Thank you for stopping by my little corner in cyber space! Cheers!