This is Lucy, who celebrated her 88th birthday on August 18 in my class at The Quilt Crossing in Boise. How cool is that!
The class worked on Pick-Up Sticks from The Quilter’s Practical Guide To Color, learning how to make this improv block the easy way. Everyone had a great time, especially Lucy!
Some of Lucy’s Piece O’ Cake applique quilts were hanging in the classroom and it was so much fun to have them there. This is her version of Spectacular Spring from Applique Delights (still available as a downloadable ebook).
And this is Lucy’s version of Thru Grandmother’s Window, our first block of the month. The patterns are available as downloadable ePatterns.
Lucy and I agreed that it’s good to have a goal and we both want to be quilting into our 100s. That’s an excellent goal, don’t you think?!
I just watched Stephen Wilkes’ TED Talk. He is a photographer with a vision—and some exceptionally cool equipment.
My Photo Class assignment for the week is ‘stuck in place.’ We have to pick a spot and stay in it for an hour, taking pictures. I had the same assignment last year and really enjoyed it. I’m glad to have seen this video before I set out with my camera :-).
NASA has a massive library of amazing photos and they are right there for us to use! Read the fine print because there are some restrictions but for the most part we can use them for non-commercial purposes. I have always loved this sort of picture…
This image shows the galaxy Messier 94, which lies in the small northern constellation of the Hunting Dogs, about 16 million light-years away. Within the bright ring around Messier 94 new stars are forming at a high rate and many young, bright stars are present within it – thanks to this, this feature is called a starburst ring.
And the earth from space is also pretty darned interesting!
A hurricane, seen from space.
I was reminded about these free NASA images by John McWade. You should watch his free video about how he made calendars using these images. I read all of his issues of Before & After, published over the last many years. I learned so much about graphic design, text, and layout from him! He is now at Lynda.com and I wish him years of happiness there.
If you get my newsletter you will have seen the Hexy Bird block I’m working on now. I still have to add a pupil to the eye, stitch the blue hexies into flowers, and stitch the yellow and orange hexies together to make the larger hex that surrounds the bird—and then applique them to the block—but you can see where it’s going. I think this will be the center of a terrific baby quilt!
Below is Linda’s Hexy Bird, which is also very cute. Isn’t it surprising to see how different a block can look in a different colorway?!
It may be a while before I have borders around my block, but when I get it together, I’ll share the photo. Click to see the Hexy Bird ePattern if you missed it when I showed it before.
Jeff Boyce is a police officer and amateur photographer who set off on a photography quest. You can watch the video on this post, or click here to watch it and read what he wrote (his story is well worth reading).
Mr. Boyce wrote that he took off about 5 weeks off from his regular job and set out in his truck with no particular destination in mind—but with the intention to produce timelapse sequences. This entire timelapse sequence, titled Edge of Stability, was recorded between May and June of 2015.
Isn’t it wonderful to be consumed by a creative venture! To learn as much as you can, to experiment, to work hard to fulfill your vision—whether you use a camera or fabric.
I sometimes wake up at night, thinking and/or worrying. Do most women do that? For me it’s not an every-night occurrence—it happens in spurts.
When Steve and I were younger and made a lot less, I woke up worrying about money. Steve never did, and he thought I was crazy to lose sleep worrying about problems that would work themselves out. (It takes a lot to make him wake up worrying.) He was right; those worries tended to dissipate with time.
These days I am more likely to wake up thinking about how I’ve managed to do or say something stupid the day before, the week before, or farther back. I wish I could say that I always say and do the right thing. I try, but I fail often enough to wake me up—thankfully, not every night.
What gets me back to sleep is the thought that where there is life, there is hope. Every day really is a new day, with a chance to do better. Goodness knows, I keep trying and maybe someday I’ll be like those people who always seem to know the right thing to say or not say, at exactly the right time. If you do this too, take heart in the fact that you are not alone. We are each of us a work in progress :-).
Creative thoughts…
Then there are the times I wake up with creative ideas. I like this a whole lot better, even if I do lose sleep, which brings me back to the topic at hand… deep thoughts.
Most of us don’t create in a vacuum—our creativity is fed by that of others. So it makes sense to be open to new ideas, new ways of seeing and interpreting the world around us. With that in mind, I’d like to direct you to this post by Pam Holland. I especially enjoyed the video she posted. Pam is a beautiful photographer and her images do flutter around in my head. Thank you, Pam, for posting them!
I also very much enjoyed the TED talk by Béatrice Coron, a papercutter artist whose work I had not seen until I found this video (bottom of post). Her work is inspiring, beautiful, and thought-provoking. FYI: I found this talk by going to TED and searching for ‘creativity’. I’ll bet searching for ‘inspiration’ would yield wonderful results as well.
I am currently feeling my way toward new ideas, even as I work on quilts that are stylistically similar to those I’ve made in the past. Once these are complete, I can turn my attention to quilts that are, I hope, completely different for me. Until then, ideas are constantly swirling around in my head, and I’m enjoying the thinking process.
In closing, let’s all sleep well, turn off the worries, trust in a new day, and think about being creative!
Below is Linda’s Hexy Bird, which is also very cute. Isn’t it surprising to see how different a block can look in a different colorway?!
Piece O Cake Blog 