The Ever Expanding Blog Hop….

….otherwise known as the epic fail, on my part. I’ll admit, up front, that I had completely forgotten about this little idea. Gemma tagged me last week. I began to roughly draft a post and then it went right out of my head. It wasn’t until this morning, when another lovely blog friend asked me to be her tag-ee, that I remembered I was already part of it and had to decline. Later it dawned on me that the day for my post was…..today! Eek! Better get on and write something then.

The idea is to answer the four questions and then nominate three other people to carry the torch onward and outward into the blogging universe.

1. What are you currently working on?

I have several projects on the go right now, as is usually the case around here. A slew of dressmaking patterns, fabric cut out, in various stages of putting together. For more specific details on those, see my previous post on Works in Progress.

On the patchwork front, I’m making a Giant Vintage Star Quilt. That requires use of the kitchen table and sewing machine and when that isn’t possible I have a hand sewing project of Grandmother’s Flower Garden blocks. And of course there is the year long Friendship Quilt swap. Such a special thing to be part of, for so many reasons.

Designing for my classes is on going from week to week.

2. How does your work differ from others of its genre?

The short answer here is that it doesn’t, not really. I make clothes from patterns that many others have used. Thank goodness for that. Sewing bloggers are very generous with their time and knowledge and post plenty of helpful information, when they have made a garment. I follow ideas I have seen online for patchwork quilts and take inspiration from very many places for both my own personal card making and the projects I teach in class.

3. Why do you write/create what you do?

Quite a few reasons, but the main one, that applies to all three areas I’ve mentioned so far, is that I love making things and always have.

For dressmaking specifically, I would say a desire to have clothes in my wardrobe, that I want to wear and are a good fit. I’m working on that! My longer term goal is to be able to make clothes for my daughter that don’t look home made. At 15, she is a tiny 4’ 8” and I don’t want her to be restricted to the children’s department when she is an adult.

For patchwork: I would like to be able to gift both my children a hand made quilt when they leave home. I also want to improve my hand sewing skills and the Flower Garden blocks are good for that.

For paper crafting: I love to give hand made cards, for the personal touch and I so enjoy teaching my classes. It is wonderful to see the proud look on a new card maker’s face when they see that they really can produce professional looking cards themselves.

4. How does your writing/creating process work?

Again, this differs depending on the area of creativity. Dressmaking projects arise in a variety of ways. It could be because I want/need a new item of clothing, because I want to learn a particular set of skills, or simply because I’ve seen a dress on a sewing blog and think I need it too!

In other areas of sewing, including patchwork, it’s usually what I have seen while meandering around the internet from one blog to another. You know how that goes.

With paper crafting I either have a person in mind that I need to make a card for, or projects to design for an upcoming class. For the latter I tend to go with a theme eg wedding, birthdays, Christmas, or I pick one stamp set and try to come up with three different ways to use it. Sometimes I’ll adapt an idea I’ve seen on Pinterest and filed away for inspiration. Other times I’ll just sit down with the chosen stamp set, pick a couple of colours and go with the flow.

So….I answered the questions, but here’s the tricky part. This hop has been going on for a while now and I imagine most of you reading today, will have come across it on at least one other blog during the last couple of weeks. I left it too late to ask anyone if they minded me tagging them. Instead I am going to throw open an invitation to you all. If you haven’t yet been asked to take part and would like to, just leave a comment here. Your post would need to go live next Monday, the 16th. I’ll add up to three names to the end of this post on Wednesday.