Creative Play Newsletter – Your Creativity Journey
I have been thinking a lot about my own creativity journey lately. Whenever I think about it, I imagine it as an epic journey, like Cheryl Strayed hiking the Pacific Crest Trail (see Wild). Though I am never going to actually hoist a huge pack to my back and set …
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Creative Play Newsletter – What Do You Love?
There’s a lot of focus today on whom you love, but it’s a great day to also think about WHAT you love. Understanding what you love (and equally important, what you DON’T love) is a key part of unlocking your voice as an artist. Knowing what you love is also …
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Creative Play Newsletter – The Power of the Small Adjustment
I don’t know about you, but I find January to be a little overwhelming. I love the start of a new year and all of the promise that comes with it, but I feel bombarded with calls for improvement. “A New Year, A New You! Lose those 10 lbs. Now!” …
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2018 Year in Review
Eleven finished quilts this year! It’s hard for me to believe that 20 years ago when I started quilting, it took two years for me to finish one quilt. Of course, that was before I had a sewing machine so adopting modern technology certainly helped. These quilts include several made …
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Shenandoah Album
The rum cakes are out of the oven, the bread is rising, and my family is out doing some last Christmas shopping so I have a few minutes to catch up on the blog and share about my final quilt for 2018. For five weeks, beginning on the 3rd of …
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Creative Play Newsletter – Finding Joy
I’m struggling to get into the holiday spirit this year because my work has really been getting me down. I put a hold on my Victims Quilt project over the last five weeks to work on another project – a comfort quilt for a close cousin of mine who was …
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Halloweenies Quilt
Last week, I shared the other quilts I have made recently from patterns by McKenna Ryan. Here’s the last one I finished, called “Halloweenies.” I finished it just in time too, at about 11 AM on October 31st. With this one completed, I have a quilt for every season to …
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Creative Play Newsletter – Fear of the Blank Page
In an episode of the Creativity Habit podcast that I was listening to recently, the host Daphne Cohn asked artist and author of The Creative Sandbox Way Melissa Dinwiddie about facing the fear of the blank page. Melissa answered that the best thing is to just make a mark, any …
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In Full Bloom Quilt
I now have a full collection of scenic McKenna Ryan quilts to hang in my stair hall and change with the seasons. In 2016, I finished “Storybook Farm”, which I had been working on since, um, 2007? Then, I finished “When Friends Gather” in 2017. (The deer block in the …
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Kima’s Chicks 2018
Well over a decade ago, I bought the rest of a bolt of fabric that I thought only I would love. It had a bright yellow background and was covered with drawings of chickens in kerchiefs and aprons with flowers and phrases like “Farm Chicks are Cool!” and “Party on, …
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