Its an new year, its a new day........

It is what it is.....

I have had a magnificent start to my new year....no dramas...so far.
I cannot tell you how I love peace and quiet, how I crave calm and gentle rythmns and slow breathing. That is why I love to sit and stitch and see a slow unfurling of a project as it ever so slowly comes to fruition.

Mind you there are days I want a little more and that is when I shop!! 

I have had my first little completion for 2014.

Here it is as it sat patiently on my design wall. A project that I had worked on slowly throughout last year.
It is a pattern from the fab website of Anna Maria Horner, a generous crafter and designer (whom I hope receives as much if not more than she so generously gives.) I am constantly inspired by those who live with such a generous mindset. It is something I am trying to remind myself to do more often.

I was given the fabric by a dear friend, and it has some emotion attached to it, making this a very heartfelt quilt. 
My friend lost her sister to cancer recently, the fabric was collected from sewing projects the sisters had done over their childhood years. I was handed a bag, and my friend said, "Please have these, I know you will use them and I cant stand looking at them anymore"

To me they were just so lively and pretty, I knew as soon as I saw them that I would use them in that pattern by Anna Maria Horner.

So it was a lot of cutting and sewing of strips.

A lot of cutting and resewing but as I did a little every now and then, I got closer and closer to the final end result.

This pattern is just made for scraps and bright eclectic mixes of colour. Thank you Anna Maria, you have spread your good will to someone you may never meet but my friends sister lives on thanks to your creativity.

My friend was also generous to me allowing me to make such a wonderful quilt. 

Now I knew that my friend was stuck in some sadness when she gifted the fabric to me, so I used all and any of the scraps left from the quilt to make her a gift.

I am happy to say she was well pleased, now she can see the fabric and have fond and happy memories rather than the responsibility of "doing" something with it.

I also had more to make this bag, which I think will be handed on to my friend as she loves a tote bag also, and I have too many. This sweet pattern is from Annie Downs of Hatched and Patched.

I have so much fun making things such as this, and as much fun giving them to people I know who will use them.

For me the joy is often in the creative process, the making NOT always the having....but sometimes I do like to keep a special quilt and this one will be that. A generous gift and a great friend who entrusted me with her precious memory.

Now I know a lot of people use this time of year to make promises, set goals yada yada, yada. 

 I think self improvement is admirable, I think goals are totally necessary, so I am learning to be kind and love who I am in all my wonky, crazy glory. I am who I am, complex, flawed , not perfect but I get up each day wondering not what I can do to improve me, but how I can make something that will improve someone else's world a little. Works for me.