A Community

I don't know about you, but I sometimes feel isolated in the creative life I am creating.

I have a serious addiction to fabric and quilts - I can talk the hind legs off a donkey about both things! I create new patterns and designs in my sleep. I simply love everything fabric...

Whilst my lovely and fabulous friends listen and nod approval in the right places, they just don't get it.... my passion for quilting and creating patchwork is a slightly oddity - one that they love in me because they get given quilts that I have been experimenting with! But they just don't get it...

For me the blogs of the quilting community are as close as I get to 'talking' to other people with the same passion...that and Twitter!

Blogs that I follow - I have around 40 on my favourites list - are a link to other people who are just as potty about fabrics and quilts as I am. They are inspiring, informative and down right gorgeous...

They are my quilting bee!

The lovely quilters who write the blogs will probably never know that they provide a creative life line that allows me to explore ideas, learn new techniques and just feel part of a community....

There are a few I love: I'm a Ginger Monkey, Quilting is my Therapy and Stitched in Color to name 3, but I have found a couple more this week that could become firm favourites:

Live a Colorful Life is a fabulous mix of quilts, book reviews and life. It is bright a bold and I love that. The bi line 'selvaging my sanity... one stitch as a time' describes exactly how I feel!

Another fabulous blog, Handmade by Alissa is a blog all about modern quilting. There are some amazing photos of fabulous modern quilts. I love the clean lines and the negative spaces. Negative spaces are a new thing to me and I love them!

The last blog is by Angela Yosten. Again it is a mix of quilts, techniques and life. It is  full of gorgeous photos and I am a sucker for photos of quilts, fabric, cake.....

I hope you enjoy exploring the blogs... let me know if you have any I could check out!

Getting inspiration..

Quilting along the Grain is a pretty new blog - it follows on from the end of funky diva designs, my bag making business - and as such I am still working into a groove.  It is taking a while to work my style and what I want to say...

FDD had a blog, but that was all about designing, making and selling bags. When a personal or quilt post crept in I always felt kinda guilty! This blog is the opposite, it is about creating, sharing tips and logging my growth as a quilter, mother and teacher..... but old habits are proving hard to break!

Yesterday whilst looking after a poorly mini monster I grabbed a mug of coffee and surfed some of my favourite blogs. They are mixture of quilt and sewing blogs, as you would expect! As I read through all of the latest posts and grew jealous at the fabric people have been buying, I came across Stitched in Color's older post about change.

At the end of last year Rachel shut her business and started on her quilting journey full time. Her blog is a fabulous riot of colour, insights into her life and absolutely amazing quilts! This blog post at the end of 2011 struck a cord.

She talks about the the changes she has made and about her blog and why she is driven to write it. Do you write for an audience or for you?

On my previous blog I wrote to show people my work and hopefully get sales. I kinda wrote for an audience - at least some of the time. This blog is not aimed at selling anything, it is just to share my journey, which is a shift from for an audience to writing for me.

That shift is huge!

It is hard shift to make, to be able to relax and just blog my own thoughts, achievements and creations is strangely stressful! Kinda like having the kids home all day and after they all tucked up in bed you find yourself still watching kids TV....

As you can see I am still working the balance out, and it may take quite a bit longer!

In the meantime, here is a my gorgeous bright new quilt:

Which was quickly stolen and used during lunch:

Pesky monsters!