I Was Away...

I went to Nova Scotia. Be still my heart.

Walks on the beach in the morning, in the storms, in the quiet, in whatever moment I got.

Oh yes, and there was teaching too. More on my amazing students next time.

Sunsets led to candlelit dinners filled with stories and laughter.

And many moments of peace.

For One Day

Selvages.

Because I use a lot of fabric, I seem to hoard a lot of fabric, I have a lot of selvages. A few years ago I started saving them (instead of... GASP! throwing them away). They filled my giant jar slowly and steadily. Then they ended up all over my basement as the kids got their hands in the jars. Recently I cleaned up my jars - strings were donated for charity quilts, snippets got sewn together a bit, and the selvages were sent away.

You see, I may keep the selvages. I may admire the selvage quilts you find, but I have no real interest in making one. I've got enough want-to-dos on my list that a selvage quilt will never find its way to the top of the list. So I packed them up and sent them off to quilty friends who would make very good use of them.

It is easy to get caught up in making every single cool idea you see. So easy to think you need to keep everything for one day. I just saved my stuff for someone else's one day.

And now my jar is empty, all ready to be filled as I play with fabric again.

Hugs and Kisses

Hugs and Kisses 

105'' x 90''

The Beast is finally done! I really should call it that instead of Hugs and Kisses. It doesn't seem quite appropriate for something that is supposed to be a romantic gift.

I actually finished it a few weeks ago, but it's taken me a bit to clean up our room and take photos.

For more on the progress of this quilt you can check out these posts.

The fabric stack
In Progress
Admitting Defeat 
Clear the Decks (committing to finishing this and only this quilt)
Been Quilting in progress
Picking Binding (you'll see I went with none of these)

Quilted with Wonderfil, a local thread company. It was a great variegated pink that worked nicely. And Aurifil white on the Xs. As usual, I used Quilter's Dream 100% cotton batting in Select weight.

And now we sleep under it. We can still keep the window open even though fall settled in to a night time chill. With all that quilting it is a heavy quilt that wraps around us.

Friday Favourite - Maud Lewis

Cleaning up my studio this week I found a card I framed years ago and hung when my writing desk was jammed in a closet. The smile on my face was instantaneous and the sigh that passed my lips more than audible. I found my picture of Maud Lewis.

Maud Lewis was a Nova Scotia artist. Her style is much copied and the whole lot generally called Nova Scotia folk art. The diminutive woman, crippled from childhood polio, lived in abject poverty but appears to have found incredible joy in painting. And for decades now that joy passes to nearly every single person who sees her tiny paintings.

Her paintings depict rural Nova Scotia life. Snippets and details captured in saturated colours on tiny canvasses, boards, cookie sheets, and more. They glow with life. Click here for a snippet of her work (I don't have permission to share the images.)

For me, there is phenomenal inspiration from this woman. Her house sits in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. It is about the size of my sewing room. The entire house is the size of my sewing room. Covered in her paintings with nearly every surface accentuated by colour. It is nothing short of a happy place. I can only imagine what it was like when her energy truly filled the place. It is the perspective of joy in such a place, in such poverty, that smacks me on the face when I need it. (It truly was serendipity that I found the photo this week.)

One day, when I am rich I will get my hands on one of her tiny paintings. I will put it on a large white wall so I can sit and stare at it all day long. And it will make me think of my alternate soul in Nova Scotia, an inspiring woman, and the perspective I constantly need slapped across my cheek.