Gratitude | Needle and Foot

Yay for Fridays! I haven’t worked outside the home for the past three years but Fridays still feel good. Maybe not as much of a relief as when I was working but they still give me bit of a thrill knowing that the routine relaxes. No school for Julia, no work for Ray – family time. Hope you are all looking forward to the weekend.

Back when the new year started in January, there were posts flying around suggesting that people select a word to focus on as a way to give a theme to the year. After a brief internal debate over what incredibly important, intellectual and philosophical word would be good for me, I settled on “relax”. If I could have had two words, it would have been “relax already”, as in get.over.it! I am fairly certain no one worries as much as I. If there is something to fret about, I will do so. Actually, even if there is nothing to fret about, I will do so. Enough already. I cannot count the number of times that I have freaked out over something only to experience it, or get through it, and think to myself, oh – that wasn’t as bad as I expected. So, my new motto – just relax. I have been telling this to myself on a fairly regular basis over the past couple of months. It seems to be helping. Plus it gave me an excuse to buy this cute panel with alphabet letters and create a little bunting.

Isn’t that great? I have it hanging on the headboard of the guest bed which is in my sewing room. In complete honesty, I took a close up shot of the bunting because there is such a mess piled all over the bed. I’ll be honest about it but that doesn’t mean I will post a picture of it for all of the internet world to see. 🙂 I like the bunting and it is a fun reminder of my 2015 word. Plus it makes sense to have it above the bed. Kind of inviting – or it would be if one could actually see the bed beneath those letters.

This week was mostly focused on Etsy product for my shop but I did make good progress on my neutrals/heart quilt. Now that I added the heart, I don’t know what to call it. I should finish piecing it in a couple of days. Check this out though.

I am really liking it.

It is going to be a gorgeous weekend. We will be working on the house on the river that we bought last fall. (I wrote about that here, in case you are curious.) New windows were put in today. Julia and I will work on the teeny tiny yard tomorrow. It is coming along nicely.

Hope everyone is well and happy and relaxed!

Linking to TGIFF, Confessions of a Fabric Addict, and WIDTW at SewStitchingCute.

Hi Everyone! Two posts in as many days. How about that?

I have recently started reading Yvonne’s blog over at Quilting Jetgirl. She is a really talented quilter and her blog is fun to read. She has begun a link up on Thursdays that she calls Thankful Thursdays. This week she has a great post about the inspirational quilters from Gees Bend that recently spoke at Quilt Con. It was really an interesting read. I think it is a timely reminder to focus on what we are grateful for. My last post was a bit of a downer because I recently finished a quilt and was not so thrilled with the final product. Rather than point out the nice things such as the amazing, hand dyed fabric that I used as the center accent fabrics (which I won from the monthly giveaway sponsored by Angela on soscrappy.com!) or the overall look of the quilt, all I could see was the less than perfect quilting I had done. Way too negative.

So this post is a reminder for me to remain mindful of the positive. This week I am filled with gratitude for the amazing spring blossoms that I have in my garden. We are having a very early spring – it has been unseasonably warm here in CA while the rest of the world is enduring a very harsh winter.

My peach tree is blossoming. Crazy early and I am hoping we will still get peaches. Hard to say with the blossoms coming about in February. Either way, it looks lovely.

Daffodils and primroses are in bloom as well.

Hard to believe how the climate can be so incredibly opposite from one side of the country to the other. The silver lining to a crazy warm winter are these blossoms that are popping up in my yard. Hope the eastern half of the world begins to thaw soon.

I had lots of finishes this week. I started replenishing the little clothesline/clothespin bags that I sell on Etsy. I was almost sold out (it is warm enough to use a clothesline in parts of the country!) This week I made them with upcycled denim jeans that I thrifted. They came together so quickly compared to the ones that I have made with burlap. (Burlap can be tricky to work with.)

And now a polka dotted version.

Nice to add a few new items to my Etsy shop.

Also finished up the February Row for my RSC15 quilt. I am following along with Mari over at Academic Quilter on her Classic Stitches Row Quilt. She should be releasing the next block for March on Tuesday of next week. Looking forward to seeing what she has planned as well as what color Angela has picked for March. For February Mari did a tutorial on these little heart blocks. I did 6 inch blocks. They were very simple to piece.

Here they are with the broken dishes blocks that we did for the January row.

They look cute side by side like this. Tempting as it is, I won’t stitch any rows together until I see what the others look like.

Hope you are all finding reasons to feel grateful. Some days you have to look deeper to figure it out but there is always, always something. Thanks to Yvonne for the reminder. Leave me a comment on gratitude. I would love to fill the page with positive thoughts. 🙂

Linking to Thankful Thursday and Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, as well as TGIFF.

Needle and Foot

Category Archives: Gratitude

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