I have a shop.  Some may call it a studio.  It’s where I go to create, sew and quilt and have some fun time.  It use to be a two and a half car garage, but slowly it was enclosed, wall board put up and painted, new lighting installed, a furnace added, air conditioner added, a new ceiling(I posted about this ceiling last year) the floor painted and all David’s tools were relegated to one small corner or out in the shed and shelves were put in for bolts and boxes of fabric.  I moved all the fabric I had stored in an upstairs bedroom out to the shop. Fabric we had sold at our quilt shop several years ago.  Hundreds of bolts.  Bolts that are slowly disappearing as I use the fabric for backing for quilts or in quilts.   I started out with about three hundred bolts and am down to about one hundred.  Does that tell you how much I sew?    Even then I cannot pass up fabric.  Online, in stores, in antique stores which are great places to find vintage fabric.  You just have to be careful when buying from there as the fabric isn’t all it seems to be.  I have bought fabric at what I thought was a great price and got it home and it had holes in several different places.  Not a bad thing if you are just going to cut out a piece out here and there, but, still, disappointing. I bought three yards of fabric just recently and when I got it home it was three yards alright, just three yards that had been pieced together in one long piece.  I am cutting it up for a quilt so no problem again, but I should have checked more closely, but the lady who had the booth was there and was soooo helpful in helping me find cottons after I told her I looked for fabric for quilts.  It is pretty fabric, though.

Now, when I can grab an hour or two or three, I will go out there and create.

I light a sweet scented candle because of these:

My two puppers who have decided they like to be indoor dogs better than outdoor dogs now.  That’s okay.  I love having them with me except when Bonnie gets all excited about the flies flying against the door window and slobbers all over it trying to grab them and eat them.  I wash that window every, single, day and right now it has slobber all over it.

 

Then I turn on talk radio.  Ever since I was a little girl, I have listened to the radio.  My mother always had the radio turned onto WKBV in Richmond, Indiana listening to the Chuck Yount afternoon talk show.  There was a Breakfast Club show she listened to, but I can’t remember the man who was the host of it.  Mom’s radio is where I first heard John Denver sing “Country Roads” and I have loved that song ever since.   It was on Mom’s radio that my brother heard that he had won a Gene Autry gun and holster in a contest he had entered. It was the time when the musical “Camelot” was popular and I just loved that song.  It didn’t matter where I was on the farm, out in the barn, in the chicken house, in the garden, when that song would come on the radio Mom would send one of my brothers out to call me in so I could listen to it.  Camelot was on television just the other day and I still love it.  I was blessed to see Richard Harris as King Arthur in the play years ago. I sat transfixed at every song and feel it was a highlight of my life.  I saw it again years later with Michael York as King Arthur and it wasn’t nearly as good.     The radio has always been a part of my life.  Now I listen to talk radio and the local news and I am fine with that.

I mainly work on quilts although I do do a few craft things with felt and I make purses when the mood hits me.  This is a quilt top begging me to finish it.  I have several more that are calling to me.  Right now I am working on a quilt for a gift for Christmas and a wedding quilt.

This is another quilt on the bottom, the backing in the middle and the binding on top.  I have about five quilts in process right now not including the large plastic box full of tops to be quilted.  So many quilts.  Too little time.  I will get them completed.  I will. I will.  I won’t.   Maybe.

A while back I made this quilt for a great-great niece.  A great-great niece.  Am I that old?   I love making baby quilts.  Sometimes I just make one because they are quick to complete and I am always hoping for another baby in the family.

I give away probably ninety-five per cent of the things I make. I use to sell things in our quilt shop, but I’m through with that now and I love giving things to others.

I haven’t had a whole day in my shop for quite a while.  The garden and yard and chickens take a lot of my time.  Good thing we have winter once in a while when I can stay inside and make things.  I’m not complaining.   I feel blessed to have a shop I can go to when I can.   I hope you have a place you can go to create, read, knit or whatever you enjoy doing.  A special, quiet place that is all yours.

Here’s to creative places and talk radio.  Bye.