Beth Ferrier’s Blog

As the Christmas season arrived I found myself in a very odd state. For the first time in maybe a bazillion years I had no big on-going projects. The book was published, the block of the month completed, all deadlines met, and almost three months until the next teaching trip.

I’ve discovered that I don’t do “time off” very well, (okay, buddies, you can stop laughing now), and I’m going to do my darnedest to never let that happen again. I think it’s my ADHD showing up. I really, really hate transitions. It’s always been hard to change gears, harder still to come to a complete stop and start up again.

Luckily, my time off arrived just in time for the Christmas holidays. Decorating and parties and gift making helped carry me through.

We celebrated birthdays. To honor my dad we met at the Outback restaurant where my niece is a server. He’s 80 this year, but somehow, he doesn’t really look old to me. It’s nearly impossible to get a good picture of him. (I think that must be where I got it). His smile often ends up looking rather like Jacob Marley’s open maw from Dicken’s Christmas Carol. (It would help if he left his teeth in, to be sure.)

The best part of the holidays, for me, has always been Christmas morning. The prep is done, another deadline met, time to relax and enjoy the day. Every year I vow to enjoy the process of Christmas preparations, but I’m not much of a shopper. If I’m not careful holiday shopping becomes a contest to find the most perfect gift, the one thing that will make each person’s life complete. Too much pressure! Instead, this year I tried to find little ways to say “I love you”, and keep the receipts handy.

Now that the boys are grown and mostly out on their own, they no longer wake us in the middle of the night, excited to see what’s under the tree. Christmas morning is most civilized now, beginning with breakfast at a leisurely 10 am, followed by opening gifts. We’re finished by early afternoon as the boys head off to spend time with their spouses’ families. It’s then that I relax with a sigh, collaspsing into a soft chair with a good book, to enjoy the quiet of the season.

Here it is, six hours shy of a new year. Not a new decade, as mathmatical purists will point out, but close enough. No more “two thousand and” to name the year, we’re familiar enough with this century to use its nickname, twenty-ten.

Astronomers tell us this is an extra special turn of the calendar. A blue moon will light our festivities. (Unless of course if you live in Saginaw, which has more cloudy, overcast days than Seattle. Fact.) The last time we had a blue moon on December 31st was way back in 1990.

That year I was 33. My oldest son was eight, my youngest just two. We were living in our new house in Wind Lake, Wisconsin, we’d only been there about eighteen months. Our lives were full with Cub Scouts and school projects. Life was pretty wild. All four boys are ADHD (really, really). Ours was a noisy, rambunctious household. Nobody walked if there was room to run, and there was always room to run. Anything with give was bounced on, including brothers sometimes.While “inside voices” were often requested they were as rare as tonight’s moon.

I’ll admit there were days that I thought I’d never survive them, the authorities would find my quivering body buried under a mountain of laundry. But mostly there was joy. Four healthy sons, four creative souls entrusted to us. Each day was an opportunity to help these precious monsters grow into the best they could be.

Nineteen years later, not only have I survived them, but they’ve survived me. They are all grown, and mostly launched. They have terrific humor, they work hard, they are good to their mates. On this Blue Moon New Years I’ll be relaxing with my best friend, probably watching old movies until it’s time to watch the ball drop, and then we’ll head off to sleep. We’ve done this new year thing a few times, after all, together for almost forty of them.

I’ll be an old woman, God willing, for the next Blue Moon New Years, nineteen years hence. When I look back at my middle aged self will I smile fondly for the choices I’ve made? Or, will I shake my head in regret for the chances not taken? It’s something to think about, on this special new year’s eve: where I have been, and where I will be. For now, I think I’ll go get started on those laugh lines around my eyes.

The Mayo clinic has found that needlework is good for us. They’ve found that the repetitive yet thoughtful actions of sewing or knitting can actually slow the loss of cognitive skills. We’ve long known that our quilting can lower our stress levels.

Listen carefully to this clip. The news folks are all into the knitting part, but researcher mentions quilting first! Later he talks about the benefits of sewing.

 http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4917058n

As a life long needleworker I’m thrilled anytime science catches up with what we have known all along: quilting has medicinal qualities! Take two nine-patches and call me in the morning.

In early March I’m teaching at a quilt show put on by Pieces From the Heart Quilt Guild of Morris, IL. These ladies have been working hard to make the show a success. I have to admit, as an avowed quilt show shopper, the vendors list has me looking forward to my free time!

To make it easy for folks to register online they’ve put the classes up on eBay. Of course, the event planners asked my permission before posting the class, and I happily agreed. This is a first for me, and I’m not entirely sure what to make of it. It seems like a terrific way for a guild to be able to handle credit card (or pay pal) payments for classes without having to deal with a merchant account. It also allows for online registration without having to pay for a high end web page.

 What do you think? Would you buy a class on eBay?

And how about that “Miracle on the Hudson”? I just can’t seem to get that crazy water landing out of my mind. I’m not afraid to fly, but flying has become a bit of a test of wills. The vast majority of the time I arrive on time, with all of my luggage. My trip karma is good, all of my travel adventures, so far, have been on the way home. But each I time I leave for a trip there is always that little worry in the back of my mind that I won’t be on time for my lecture, and that there’s really nothing I can do about that.

As I watched the news unfold, seeing the folks plucked off the wings of that floating plane, all I could think about was how they were now all late for whatever they were heading to. (As if surviving a plane crash is nothing more than a hiccup in their travel plans.)

And then I thought about my quilts. My favorite quilts, would be under water, in the belly of the plane, for how long? How long would I have to wait to get them back? And what kind of shape would they be in after being wet for so long. (The good news, the Hudson is salt water at that point and salt helps to prevent colors from running.)

If nothing else, this amazing event has reinforced my habit of asking for exit row seating. Prized for the extra leg room, it comes with the bonus of being the first out. Works for me.

Some things you just say yes to, no matter what. When the wonderful folks at American Quilters Society ask if you’d like to teach at the show in Paducah, KY there is pretty much just one answer.

 The request came the day after my first book deadline, while I was in Houston at Quilt Market. I was already booked for the weekend of the show and ordinarily I would have just declined the invitation. But since AQS is a pretty big deal, and the group already camping out on those dates was able to shift to the next weekend, I was very happy to say yes.

 What I didn’t figure in was the amount of paperwork that would need to be done immediately. As in, before the next book deadline. As in, the instant I returned from Houston. Yikes! But  it all got done and now registration is open.

I’m thrilled to be teaching a ton of classes. One class is on a new applique technique that will be included in the new book.

Two piecing classes are available. The first is Tools Rule. This is a fantastic class for those of you who chop your stash up into strips or noodles or worms. Of course, the class will also include tons of my favorite sneaky piecing tricks and tips. (The fabric is way prettier than shown. I need to work on my photography skills.)

The other piecing class is Slick Slicing Tricks. I’ve squeezed lots of my very best sneaky piecing tricks into this little quilt.  Kits will be provided for all three of these classes, with lots of the prep work already done so we can get right down to business.

And finally, I’m teaching three classes on free motion quilting. It’s kind of funny. Guilds book me mostly to teach applique and piecing classes, but when I lecture most of the questions are about the quilting on my quilts. Even though I do mostly traditional quilts I would say that my quilting style is a little more contemporary. It is most definitely playful.

The first class, Romancing the Stitch, is an all day workshop that covers from basic design, specialty threads, bobbin work and fills galore.

Feathers and Ferns focuses on creating marvelous motifs in our quilting.

And finally, Beginning Free Motion Quilting is just the right class for those who have never dropped their feed dogs but would love to learn how.

Registration is already started and classes are beginning to fill. I’ve never been to the show at Paducah so it will be quite an adventure for me. Have you been? What words of advice do you have for me?

8 Foot Sativa lyrics

Names Without Numbers lyrics

8 Foot Sativa lyrics

Keri Noble lyrics

Babes On Broadway lyrics

DJ Tiesto lyrics

Sara Bareilles lyrics

Zox lyrics

ROBBIE WILLIAMS AND NICOLE KIDMAN lyrics

Dierks Bentley lyrics

T.I. lyrics

White Christmas lyrics

Samantha Jade lyrics

Pink Floyd lyrics

Moby lyrics

A-Ha lyrics

Oingo Boingo lyrics

Staind lyrics

Interpol lyrics

Akrobatik lyrics

Ne-Yo lyrics

Riva feat. Dannii Minogue lyrics

ROBBIE WILLIAMS AND NICOLE KIDMAN lyrics

Jordan Pruitt lyrics

X-Clan lyrics

Wondermints lyrics

Linda Eder lyrics

E-17 lyrics

System F lyrics

Deborah Cox lyrics

The manuscript is done. Weeks of writing, organizing, sewing have been distilled down into a couple of boxes. The step outs went out on Monday, a box of  zip top baggies filled with bits and parts, all ready for their big moment with the photographer.

 The words head out today. Piles of paper, checklists, image logs, oh my! All those hours at the keyboard distill down to this little box. The mess left behind is an amazing thing. Every horizontal surface in the studio is piled several layers deep.

Quilts, fabric, threads, piled higher and deeper.

What a disaster! My jobs for today? Pack for Quilt Market in Houston, I leave at the crack of dawn tomorrow. Ship off the manuscript. Get a pedicure and a book to read. And, oh, yeah. Clean up this mess!

When I first started publishing patterns, all those years ago, I really didn’t expect to be successful. (Okay, I’ll admit it, I still don’t!) I was so sure that my patterns would never sell that I bought my first thousand pattern bags without vent holes (which helps them lie flat) so that I could use the other 999 for sandwiches.

While I was truly grateful to the local shops that purchased the patterns I really thought they were mercy buys just to get me out of the store. The first time I saw my patterns displayed at a shop that didn’t know me personally I actually sat down and cried. (Now I know how Sally Field felt at the oscars when she said, “you like me, you really, really like me”.)

It was just like that when I was at The Quilted Cottage, our terrific local quilt shop. They bought the whole collection of Audrey’s Garden! While I was there on open sewing day a customer bought some of two of the fabrics just because she liked them!

And then Karen, my best bud, told me that she saw my fabric in the latest McCall’s Quilting magazine. I can tell you that we have a project using the fabric scheduled for an issue on the newsstands at the beginning of next year, but I was surprised to hear that it might appear sooner.

Here’s what my eagle eyed buddy saw:

Right there on page sixty-two, under the ruler! Sure the blurb is about the Creative Grids square it up and fussy-cut rulers. I love that they chose a bit of Audrey’s Garden to show off the ruler. Doesn’t it look lovely?

So, dear readers, I’m asking for Audrey’s Garden sightings. It should be arriving in your local quilt shops this month. I would love to hear about where you find it and how you use it.