The house is an absolute mess. It’s sunny but very cold outside. The first day of Winter here. This morning I wore jeans and two layers, plus my beautiful bright red silk scarf (my parents brought it back from India when I was young), to the farmers market. I felt that beautiful delicious ‘it’s not raining'!’ feeling.

But the floors need a vacuum - I actually think there’s dried mud tramped by big boots from when it was raining. And the washing up needs doing*. The absolute fun of working from home means I see and ignore and feel guilt and ignore and see these things all day.

BUT but.. I have a clean table so that I can do some machine quilting tomorrow. And I’m very very excited about that. I haven’t had a clean table in a bit too long. The rain has been overwhelming and brought us all down. And it’s hard to do stuff {cleaning} when it’s such a haruummpp feeling in the house. I will probably start with some small piecing and finishing some quilt stuff that I’ve already done. It is WIP month after all. And that will spark ideas for the next, bigger and ‘proper’ quilts.

Now, to make the rest of the house tidy so that I do feel more energised and uplifted. So that it’s ok to start with the sewing that will create thread dust everywhere.

Because I tidied the cupboards over the weekend I had space to put these boxes of now-sorted threads and baskets of fabrics. There is one drawer left that I haven’t yet quite got the energy to finish. Maybe later in the week.

Today I bought some super puff quilt Australian wool wadding for 4 quilts - one for each of my kids and one for our bed. This is fluffier wadding than I’ve used before and I’m hoping that it’s ok for me to hand quilt. I may need to experiment with the correct needle and thread. But it will make for warmer quilts that’s for sure.

I just wonder how many I will get done this Winter and how many will become WIPs sitting in drawers. Please cheer and push and challenge me on to get them finished. I haven’t the space for the wadding to sit and wait to be used. Whereas made quilts do look pretty folded, even when tucked into the blanket box for Summer time.

I will probably have to dye fabric, and make sure that the kids get a say in what they want their quilts to be. This might be very hard for me as they are picky - justifiably so - and very creative. I’m sure that I’ll get some very specific colours and designs. And maybe I’ll even get some drawn designs. I wonder if I might get one of them to help me with it. That would be fun too, wouldn’t it.

These photos are the messy and clean(er) table. Me winding and arranging threads into boxes and baskets. I’m sure I do this every few months, but it’s always satisfying any way. And I hope each time that I get rid of more things, make things tidier and perhaps there’ll be less time between having to arrange and clean up again. Wishful thinking as always.

This is blog post number 3 in 3 days. I think I’ve only written three over the past 6 months. That’s something. I hope I keep it up. Simple stories of the day or week. I’ll probably cut back to 2 or so a week, but that will still be more regular than I have ever in the past 5 years.

If you want to do some quilting with me, I am going to do a quilt-a-long during July. I’m still working out all the exact ways it will work, but I’d love to have you on the journey. You won’t need to make 4 quilts of course - oh golly - but maybe if we could work on getting 1 quilt made over a 6-8 week period that could be fun.

I will share the process of the quilts in my online quilting course here. I’m going to show the whole process from original ideas and inspiration, through to design, problem-solving and the making. I make improv ‘Fear-Less’ quilts, so I don’t have specific patterns, but I will show you how to make your own. And I’m planning on have some inspiration patterns for you to work with.

Anyway - leave a comment if you’re interested in joining me for a quilt-a-long and I’ll let you know when I have more info.

*My priorities lie in doing creative stuff and lounging on the couch sipping tea, rather than cleaning. I wish one person in our family was an obsessive cleaner, but no such luck…