Oct 27, 2016
My partner and I have been busy getting ready for a craft fair to be held this Saturday at the clubhouse where we live. He will actually have more things than I will at the sale but that is fine.
I will have some of my Inspiration Journals, Mobile Phone Wallets and other things for sale as well as two of my quilts.
My Mom will be at the craft fair too selling some of her paintings as well.
Take a look at this desk my partner created. It looks even better in person and will be for sale at the craft sale this Saturday Oct 29.
I have also been busy quilting client quilts. I quilted one baby quilt that was really cute.
The quilting design that was chosen reminds me of fox tails too so I think it is perfect. The other quilt from this client was a two sided quilt.
The front was all sailboats and the back was a modern version of sailboats. Although you can’t tell from these pictures I actually was able to line the two quilts up so that it really is a two sided quilt. Yeah!
We added a new addition to the family yesterday. My partner Kevin always wanted a cat, he had cats before but not for awhile. Anyway the other day we were at Bosley’s getting dog food and they had a 6 year old female cat there for adoption.She seemed to fit the bill so now we have added Mia to our little family.
We were approved for the adoption so yesterday we went and picked her up. She is very sweet natured and very curious. Cocoa doesn’t quite know what to make of her. They have been nose to nose a few times but that is about as far as it goes. She likes to hide in doorways and wait for him to walk by and then she leaps out at him. You should see the poor dog jump!! Then he won’t go near her for awhile. Oh well, I’m sure they will get used to each other in time.
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Oct 22, 2016
Have I ever been lazy today! I should have been up and at it hours ago but here I am just puttering about. One of the reasons for this is a hurt my hip. I took a machine quilting class yesterday with Kathleen Quilts. On Thursday afternoon I took time out of my day to get ready for the class. I decided to take my larger Janome Horizon machine as that is the one I do my domestic machine quilting on. It sits in a nice table. I guess I twisted wrong trying to get it out (it’s heavy) and I am in quite a bit of pain now. Oh well, hopefully it goes away by itself and I won’t need physio.
I enjoyed the class immensely, some of the designs she taught I had done on the longarm but had never attempted them on the domestic machine so it was interesting. The class has made me more determined than ever to get going with some more modern quilt designs of my own so I can practice and expand my knowledge even more.
I heard from the “opportunity” yesterday that I didn’t get the job. I was so relieved! Crazy huh. I went for the opportunity because as mentioned in my last post nothing ventured nothing gained. Now you would think I would be disappointed and upset that I didn’t get the chance to have steady income and benefits but the truth is that I would rather have freedom and the ability to be myself. This really came home to me on Monday when I had several clients drop off their quilts to me and then that night I went to a Mary Kay meeting. I have been a Mary Kay reorder consultant for 20 years now. I stayed because I love the product and enjoy the events. My director is not pushy, allows me to choose how and when I want to participate and has become a friend over the years.
Anyway, just listening to all of these directors mirror my beliefs about life and career made me make the decision that I really, really didn’t want to go back to the corporate world. When you really start down the path to fully believe in yourself and your abilities and find your voice it is impossible to go back to the person you used to be.
For instance one of the questions I was asked in the interview was “Give me an example of a time when you were given a task you weren’t trained for and how you handled it”. At the time I couldn’t think of any one example. Anyway after the interview my partner and I went for lunch and I told him the question I couldn’t answer.(For the record I did have an answer just not what they were looking for). He just looked at me and shook his head, and said “Janice, you couldn’t answer the question because there isn’t one single example, you live your life like that everyday.”
Wow! He was right, I had simply never thought of it like that. I worked in Information Technology and I managed systems for 15 years. There were lots of things I wasn’t “trained” to do, it was my job to figure out how and then train others. I still do that, I wasn’t “trained” to be a long arm quilter and yet here I am. I wasn’t “trained” to be a business person or on how to write a blog or how to market myself although I do get help from different sources. Yet, again, here I am.
Anyway back to Monday night, I came home and sat down with my partner and told him I had made the decision that even if I was offered the job I would turn it down. I was so relieved when I didn’t get it because then I didn’t have to let anyone down.
I’m glad I applied though, and grateful for the opportunity, it reinforced why I am on this path even if it defiantly not the safest or easiest one.
Love this quote! Even thinking about getting up in the morning and going to an office there was making me depressed. Life is to short not to live a life you love! Now to go put ice on this hip of mine.
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Oct 19, 2016
Quilting is finally getting done! It feels good to get back at the longarm machine. I really needed to take that week or so off though. I think everyone sometimes needs to step back from things, regroup, and seriously think about why they are doing something. The opportunity I mentioned in my last post really made me think about that. I haven’t heard whether anything has come of it or not, but either way I have a much clearer idea of what I want my life to look like.
It’s funny how life goes, I had a lull in my quilting business and this opportunity came up so I decided to look into it. Nothing ventured nothing gained type of thing. The very next day after a meeting I had, I got called asking if I had time to quilt a quilt! Wow OK yes. The day after that another client called asking the same thing and then the third day this happened yet again!
So now I have several quilts waiting to be quilted. I guess the universe was trying to tell me to just slow down and stop worrying, things will turn out the way they are supposed to and it is all good. Patience my friend. New businesses take time to grow.
What the lull I had also taught me though is if I intend to continue down this path I also need to diversify so I will be putting some thought into what I want that to look like.
There is a mantra that I started using about 3 years ago, I sometimes forget to apply it though. I think it’s time to pull that one out again and pin it to my wall.
Meanwhile I finished one client quilt and need to get back to work now quilting the others.
This is Over the Pond an older pattern from Quiltmaker magazine. My client did it scrappy and it turned out well. It was just quilted with a very simple “water” design as we didn’t want anything to interfere with the pictures. I used Superior Threads So Fine 50 in a soft green that blended well with all the different colours going on. I think it was a good choice of design as you just get some nice texture without overpowering the cute frogs, bees and butterflies pieced into the top.
Happy Quilting
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Oct 15, 2016
Well, it’s been a week since I last posted. Not a lot of quilting has been going on however I have spent a lot of time reevaluating things so I guess this will be another post about life.
About a week ago an opportunity presented itself to me. The one thing I have learned in life is that when opportunity knocks you at least have to open the door. I chose to open the door and actually got shown into the living room (metaphorically speaking of course). At this point I won’t know whether I will be allowed to see the rest of the house or not. Regardless of what happens it was another learning experience and I am grateful for the opportunity.
Meanwhile, life continues on, however what the opportunity did do was really make me think about the path I am on and what I want it to look like. For the past 6 months I have been working towards building my own business. It is growing but it is slow and as in any new business any money coming in ends up going back into the business not in your pocket. I have been working hard on this however what I realized in the past week is that I haven’t really given myself permission to just relax and be. In the past 6 months I have been working on something for the business. If not actually working on the quilting, I am working on building the building blocks of the back end of the business or I am learning something new, reading books to develop business skills or change my mindset. I have spent very little time just relaxing and doing something fun. You know, like reading a novel, or watching a movie or doing nothing at all.
Now I really didn’t ever spend a lot of free time doing any of those things anyway, however when I had a “job” I would do these things and not feel quilty. Now that I am working towards having a viable business I actually start to feel quilty if I take time out for just me. My task list is something like, do blog post, get newsletter out, figure out how to ….., read such and such book. What I realized is that the only real time I have spent away from thinking doing or anything else that involves the business is when I am volunteering for church, and even then I would come home on a Sunday and quite often go back to “work”.
So, this past week I took some time out, I still did what needed to get done and then I gave myself permission to watch a movie or listen to a real novel on audio books instead of a how to business book or just sit and watch the wind and rain (it’s been very stormy here the past few days).
So, I’ve learned a lot this week. Yes, I still need to move forward working on my business however I need to give myself permission to stop and enjoy some downtime as well.
So do you ever find you need to give yourself permission to just enjoy life? If so leave a comment.
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Oct 8, 2016
So this week I took part in a challenge by my business coach Morna McEver Golletz. Morna created a Facebook page Creative Passion to Profit and then she posted one challenge question a day for 5 days to the group. The challenge was to post your answer to the group and then read the others posts and comment on them to start a conversation.
The questions were all designed to get us thinking about our business and to also start stepping out of our comfort zones. For me it was literally to actually put my story out there and to comment (oh horrors) on other peoples comments. It was a great experience and I am so glad I stepped up to the challenge.
Usually I am a lurker on these types of sites. This comes back to the old record that has played in my head for years, I am not good enough. Why would anyone want to hear from me. What I discovered in actually stepping up to the challenge is that we are basically all the same. Oh sure our stories may differ, how we came to be on this journey, what kind of art we create etc, however the underlying core, the heart of the matter is what counts and in that we are very much all alike, well at least in that group.
When you start to read other people’s stories you quickly discover that they too are often struggling with the same fears as you, even the bigger names I recognized and some of the artists whose blogs I had been following (without commenting) for the past few years.
This past week was a real eye opener for me and I am so glad I decided to accept the challenge and actually do the assignments. It has been an interesting week as I have also had other doors open and opportunities present themselves. Not sure if those doors are going to lead anywhere as yet but I have decided to accept that challenge as well.
So here’s to moving forward, growing and moving out of comfort zones!
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Happy Quilting
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