Today I feel blank. Blah. Yucky. All I can do is think of all the things I want to do but feel unable, unmotivated, useless to do them. Got an email about the annual guild meeting and it’s tomorrow night and I think I should go but the thought makes me cringe because I have to actually do it. Oh why can’t I just feel up and energetic all the time. Maybe I’ll just wait and see how I feel tomorrow; I have to open at work. Maybe I’ll want to go. I think I’ll go make a list of all the things I need to do. Feeling organized makes me feel better. And “Lost” is on tonight. And I have 4 days off coming up, one of them being Super Bowl. Ok.

This is my first blog. It feels really weird to be talking to a space! Anyway, I am a quilt artist and I would like to use this blog as a place to kind of talk about the journey that has taken me here so far. I guess I like where I’m going. I started a great many years ago as a traditional quilter. Before that I went to art school where I majored in Fine Arts/Painting. Back in 1987 or so I took a class called Landscape Quilting, and lo and behold I realized could combine my love for quilting with my knowledge of painting and started making fabric pictures: landscapes, people, scenes. I worked in that way for many years, teaching a little, taking classes of my own, all while working a full time job. I ended up in a job that proved to be really stressful and at the same time I discovered food. To make a long story short I decided to quit quilting to open a personal chef business; I discovered I really loved to cook! (it was also creative) I did that for a few years till I kind of burned out of it, but I made some money doing it so that was good. Thing is, I realized I really missed thinking of my art. I realized I still looked at trees (a favorite theme of mine), and noticed colors, and I justed wanted to do it again, so I did! I decided I would get back into my art.

It really felt weird! Weird and good. It was like visiting a dear old friend that I hadn’t seen in years. My first attempt was a scene of a local beach path that came out OK. I had worked in the way I had worked before and was relieved to see I could still do it! Then I was doing a lot of hand appliqué; now I do almost all of my work on my machine. The art quilt world had changed a lot, too. Before, it was the traditional quilt vs. the art quilt and you were considered breaking the rules if you did anything too wild. Now, anything goes! It’s great! And I am so happy to be working on my art again. It’s been about 2 1/2 years. I had a lot of catching up to do, and one exercise that really helped was a doing weekly mini quilts. About a year and a half ago I read an article about a quilt artist who felt like she was having trouble finding time for her work, so she decided to make a mini quilt every week for a year. (she ended up doing 7 years!) I decided to give that a shot, and I loved it! But I will talk more about my mini quilts later. I am just so happy to be back.

This is an example of one of my recent landscapes. As I said, “trees” is one of my favorite themes. I hope to get some of my mini quilts up here soon, too. Anyway, this was kind of fun, so I’ll be back!