Days of Whine and Comfort

If I were a braver woman (or more shameless perhaps) I would show you a picture of my working surfaces at the moment. Let me instead simply tell you that even if I were to take that picture you wouldn't be able to see my work surfaces. They have somehow become buried under studio journals, piles of fabric scraps, piles of paper, including pictures ripped out of magazines, and a whole bunch of embroidery threads.

I filled up the journal I was using during the Studio Journal class. Before that class began I had two other sketchbooks going. Since the class I've been trying to use them up, and I've been referring back to my class journal while doing so. Not being able to pass up a sale, I just picked up a new sketchbook too, to use when I have finally filled the others. Too many books!

The magazine clippings will eventually end up in one or more studio journals. I've run out of scotch tape (I thought I had at least one more refill in my drawer) and can't use glue or glue sticks so they have to wait until someone runs to the store for me. The rest of the papers need to be filed in the appropriate places. What I wouldn't give for a secretary who dusts.

The fabric scraps are the leftovers from my Fungly quilt. How insane is that?! I wanted to use them up, not just put them away, but that hasn't happened. So there they sit. And now I have ideas for new quilts I want to make that don't call for those kinds of prints. Of course.

The embroidery threads are for my current project, the monochromatic postcard I'm stitching as part of the Sumptuous Surfaces class. I want to get my band sampler set up so I can practice stitches I once knew and try out others. That would be much easier to accomplish if I had a little more room in which to work! But I'm just not feeling all that well today. Some days I can work in spite of how I feel, other days it's better to simply give in and be a vegetable. I think I may need to be a vegetable for a day or two.

To tide you over I thought I would share a little quilt I made back when I first read Gwen Marston's Liberated Quiltmaking. I don't think I've shown it before. I call it "Comfort" because it's made of what I think of as comfort fibers: soft wools and flannel. They were all scraps given to me by a dollmaker friend. I carried out the comfort theme (in my mind at least) by tying it with a red crochet thread and adding a few buttons I had inherited from my mother's button tin. It's about 14" x 18".

And now I'm going to go comfort myself under a slightly larger quilt... ;- )