Around The World Blog Hop

I've joined several blog hops in the past but this is definitely a unique one...and no new project to stress over.  It's about making new friends and sharing something about yourself.  It's like passing the torch from blogger to blogger and learning something about each one along the way.

I was invited to join this hop by Karen from In The Sewing Basket.  You really must visit her blog. She has a long arm and does some awesome work, not to mention all the other projects and great information that's contained in her archives. I very much enjoyed browsing around her blog! We also found out we're both nurses and have a lot of other interests in common. It was fun communicating with her! Thanks, Karen for inviting me to participate in this blog hop!

 What am I working on? 

I seem to always be working on something, jumping from one project to the next and adding to my list instead of scratching off.  My goal for this year has been to NOT start new projects, but to finish what I've started. About three months into the year I revised that to read not start BIG projects. I'm a member of two clubs at my LQS and instead of making the full size quilts, I'm doing seasonal table runners...and actually finishing them before the next month and project comes around!! I like to challenge myself to be more creative and it's definitely been a brain exercise for me!

Here is one that really challenged me!  It's originally "Periwinkle" from Jenny Doan but I totally changed the colors and made peppermints where the white background fabric would be. I'm calling it "Stars and Peppermints" or "Here Comes Change"...it's a work in progress for sure! Making the changes allowed me to practice using my EQ7 program. (What an awesome design program.)

The below quilt was made by Shirley who facilitates one of the clubs I'm a member of.  It's a beautiful quilt using the X-blocks template. Since I didn't want to tackle the large quilt I changed the colors and came up with a table runner for 4th of July....

....and added the star pattern. It's amazing just by changing the colors the difference it can make! The entire table runner was made using the X-block template. It's really a versatile tool!

And I'm always messing around with machine embroidery too...which I love doing! I'm not a digitizer and that's okay because there are some awesome digitizers out there.

Why Do I Create?

Sometimes I think it's in the genes! My mother is very creative and all my siblings are creative as well.  My creativity is an expression of me and it makes me feel good about myself, especially when I see the joy on the faces of others when I can give them something personal that I've created. It also helps with home decorating...especially when my 24 year old daughter, while looking through her past birthday pictures,  makes a comment about the background of all her birthday photos being the same...same curtains, same pillows, same wall art! Time for a decor makeover....something I can easily do myself...saving me money so that I can buy more fabric for projects to start and hopefully finish!

Now to pass that torch....

Please visit these lovely ladies who so graciously accepted my invite to participate in this blog hop. Visit them now and see what they're up to,  then visit them next Monday, September 22nd and find out more about them and what they are creating.

Cheri from Fabric and Memories
Ann from Colourful Cross Stitches
Barbara from Sew We Go
Michele from By Hook and Needle
Jayne from Jaynes Stitching Tales

Lets keep that torch going!

Thanks for stopping by.