Blog Hop Around the World......

Who am I……who, who, who, who……do you really wanna know??

The gorgeous Gilly from the lovely blog, Gilly Makes  asked me if I would like to share a li'l about myself and participate in the 'Blog Hop Around the World'. Gilly imparts a delicious sense of happiness with both her beautiful photos, her delightful personality and of course the gorgeous makes that she creates. You really, really must visit her blog......you will be delighted!!

So....make yourself a cuppa, perhaps a li'l treat or two..... because you might just need it by the time we get to the end.

So….let me begin at the begin…..

Most every day (and some evenings) I pirouette along my botanical inspired hallway and enter my happy sewing room in readiness for a li'l dreaming, designing, creating and fun, fun, fun!

What am I working on now?

Mmmm....now....let me see. How much time do we have!! Just kidding!! I am a gal that has many lovelies in the production line at any given time....a quilt or two, revamping an antiquated lampshade, recovering a chair that has definitely seen better days, tarting up some op shop article of clothing, a cushion or two,  etc etc... (I am always making something for our li'l ole abode, changing things around). But I will spare you the ho hum details and give you a li'l  bo peep at a few lovelies that are being stitched by my li'l  fingers. Excuse me.......that "thank goodness for that" sigh of relief escaping from your lips is just a li'l too loud....I can hear it all the way down here!!

Alas, yes.... I have more than one 'lovely' in various stages of assemblage. Naughty of me, I know, but is not variety the spice of life!! I have some lovelies that take an age, hence the need for these to be punctuated by other 'quickie'  li'l lovelies.

My first 'lovely' evolving is a cathedral window quilt. Window after window of scraps of pretty fabric peeking out from white frames. This quilt was always going to be a protracted affair just because of the very nature of it. A cathedral window quilt involves oodles of cutting, lining up seams and so, so many hours are spent in trying to attain perfect corners (yes....I am a tad persnickety) where the windows meet.....hence the desire to pick it up and put it down at intervals (very, very long intervals)!!

I would dearly love to see my cathedral window quilt, enriched with its lovely patterned and coloured window panes resting on our guest bed, singing a heavenly, hallelujah chorus with those cherubic beings joining in, but I'm guessing those angels' lips will be button closed for a li'l while longer! This quilt is going to take a while.

My second 'lovely' is a Japanese inspired quilt, made entirely from panels of gorgeous Japanese silks, sourced mainly from vintage kimonos with each panel being bordered by strips of dupion silk. I'm endeavouring to applique origami flowers and leaves and scatter them intermittently over the quilt top. The problem with this quilt, is not the origami flowers, which I thought would be a wee bit of a dilemma, but with the quilting. As this quilt is 100% silk I am not quite sure how I will approach this botheration. I am thinking that the patterns in the different fabrics cry out for sashiko quilting. Silk's genetic gene pool is just a li'l too slippery, squirming and shimmying all over the place and will not lay flat. I do wish it would behave itself...but me thinks this slippery varmint will win the battle! If there are any luminaries out there as to how I would solve this wee li'l problem....please do enlighten me.

 

Of course, me wouldn't be me if my fingers weren't 'clickity clacketing' feverishly away on a woolly garment of some kind or another. As I speak my "knit by the seat of my pants" jumper is well on it's way to completion!!! Soooooo excited!! Sorry for my exuberance...but....it's just that I am a wee bit excited as it  has been a herculean effort to arrive at the stage of interlacing all those colourful strands of wool into multitudinous patterns; resulting in an almost finished rainbow-filled jumper. It won't be long (fingers and everything else are crossed) till this gal will be kindling a li'l brightness to this wintry far rural outpost with a wee bit of colour and pattern as I step out in my gleeful jumper!! Yippee!!

Most school day mornings I am in the throes of designing and preparing a stitching project for the kiddos who visit my humble abode each afternoon and while away an hour or two with a li'l stitching. Yes indeedy, each afternoon, the school bus hurtles along our winding country road, screeches to a stop, ejects excited li'l earthlings in readiness for a fun afternoon of stitching, chatter and laughter. Here are some of the stitching lovelies that one li'l girl has created whilst she has been visiting "The Kim Sharman School of Stitching Excellence"....(my tongue is firmly fixed in my cheek!!). She's a clever li'l possum, is our Holly!!

Here are some of this week's projects in progress. You could say it has been a hoot hoot kinda week!! Sorry, lame I know.....but I simply could not resist!!

How does my work differ from others of this genre?
Each one of us has our own uniqueness;  our own ability to impart our own personality, our own flair into whatever it is we create. That is the joy of creating. As for me, I love to create what makes my heart smile. I love to design and though at times I enjoy following a pattern, for the most part I like to design, expand and create my own original idea. My style is quirky, pretty (I lurve pretty), colourful, creative, meandering, embellished..... and I hope a li'l inventive....and of course always evolving. My skipping along the yellow brick road of creativity is a li'l different today  than it was a year or two ago. It is a road where I learn something every day.

Why do I write/create what I do?
I adore creating and I adore writing. It's deep within the psyche of  me. I cannot imagine a day without some form of creativity being enjoyed. I am happiest when stitching a lovely or putting fingers to keyboard and penning a written piece. I love to design and to create, and I love to stitch! It really is play. It's who I am. The arty farty gene is deep within me. Creativity is the essence of me. I love to learn. It doesn't matter what I have made, I always glean some tid bit of knowledge and file it away for another day. I love the written word. I love the interplay between words, filled with nuances; how they can be expressed in a gazillion ways. As far as the east is from the west the essence of words is limitless. Words can inspire.......uplift, they can cause one to laugh, to cry, to visualise, to ponder, to meditate, to dream, to cause one to read between the lines, to create glorious mind pictures.....aahh yes, words are limitless, there are no boundaries. So for me, the designing, stitching and making; and the writing of a blog is a perfect fit.

How does my writing/creating process work?

So much in life inspires me. Life inspires me to create and to write. Everywhere I look there is a rich array of joyous inspiration. From the majesty of God's handiwork around me, (if I live to be 100 I will never not be inspired by the gorgeous vignettes that abound), music...love, love, love music...love soundtracks to movies...so many genres of music. I always have music playing softly or blasting (quite often the bovine...the four-legged ones....bellow along; providing their own uniquely curious harmonies), whilst creating in my sewing room. Gorgeous blogs  that people write inspire me; others' creativity, a beautiful fabric, a lovely painting, a tiny button, a piece of vintage lace, something that I have read, a little girl's ideas on what she next wants to create, people's stories, always the gorgeous, gorgeous flowers..........I could write a tome from whence my inspiration emanates.

When I sit at my keyboard and  begin to type, words seem to spill out of me. I will have a tiny thought and think about how I can develop that thought, how can I make it interesting, different and enjoyable for the reader. How can I write the words that I want to say in an entertaining way. I am always thinking how best to present my thoughts in my addled brainpan.  I write for me and hopefully out there, there are a few who enjoy what I have written. More often than not my tongue is fixed firmly in my cheek, I fear I can be a bit droll...yes indeedy I must admit I see the funny side of life all too often. So, so many things in life make me giggle. After all, one cannot take oneself too seriously when one waxes lyrical about what one has made! I mean really....

Mostly writing is the easiest thing for me.....but there are other times when there is not a single idea....my fog-like brainpan just won't get into gear; but then, the fog clears and I am on my bumbling way again. I am a gal that drafts a piece, always thinking how can I make what I am trying to convey a li'l more fun. I am afraid that even when I detonate the publish button, there will always be an inkling of a thought...."oh I should have said it this way or that way. Sad....but true.

When creating a stitching 'lovely' I ask myself, how can I make this to be a li'l different, a li'l original? How can I impart 'me' into it. The design process always starts with a whisper of an idea, then the dreaming, then the plotting, then the creating. I am always amazed how a smidgen of an idea, a thought; develops into the finished creation before me. More often than not there are lots of twists and turns in that yellow brick road before reaching the destination. I often divert to explore other li'l paths along the way. My design and creative process can be both a long process or a very quick process. Sometimes it is complete inspiration....but sometimes it is all perspiration.

So.........there you have it. As you see I am not a gal with few words (how's that cuppa going?). If you have stuck around till the end many congrats and a very big thank you! The powers that be should never have given me so many questions to answer. Alas, I am a wee bit wordy but that is me, that is who I am. It would be a rather banal world if we were all the same. There has be the odd one or two of us that waffle on and on and on!! That is the fascinating and exciting thing about this blogging caper, we each have our own spin on what we create and what we write....and we just........do!

But.....enough of me.....(thank goodness for that).....I am handing all these questions over to my very dear friend, Vicki of A Quilter's Mission, who lives in the USofA. Though we have never met, I feel that we are kindred souls, and if perchance we ever should meet, there would be many a cuppa and much nattering going on. I am ever so thankful that we two collided in cyberspace! Vicki has the most beautiful spirit and generous soul. She has alchemistic fingers, performing magic with lemons and magically turns the lemons into  sweet, sweet lemonade; changing peoples lives and wrapping them up with her beautiful quilts, in a warm hug filled with much love. Do visit Vicki's  blog and be certain to visit her next Monday when she tells us all a li'l about her sweet, lovely self!

Toodlepips for now. Thank you so much for hopping down to this li'l isle, at the bottom of the world; it has been a pleasure to have you visit!  I don't know about you, but I need a breather!!