Hearts Full of Joy

to blog?

I can hear the leaves falling outside my windows, making a rythmic rustling, and I love it. Autumn is heaven where we live.

It's been 4 months since I posted.  And the more time that passes, the harder it becomes to post.

I love my blog, but it is difficult to balance blogging into my day, along with family, exercise, spiritual uplift, relaxation, recreation, serving as relief society president in our church, and keeping our businesses running. I spend so much time on the computer with our online shop that it can be hard to justify spending even a little more time in order to blog.

The past 4 months have been full of wonderful moments, and I will try to fill them in...as best I can.

a beautiful life, well-lived

i followed stephanie nielson's (nie nie) amazing and inspiring blog, and loved her long before her plane crash, as perhaps many of you did.

today i found a link to this youtube video and was deeply touched. i think you will be too.

enroute to santiago

my parents were flying over peru on a flight from dallas to santiago, in the wee hours of the morning, to begin serving as missionaries in santiago, when their plane turned around and headed towards miami, and the earthquake in chile was announced.

read more about their experience on their new blog.

blue and white perfection

my lovely friend mary (one of my lovely mary friends - i have several) shared this blog find with me because she knew i would love it, and i do. it is perfectly my style, and her's too. follow mary and her family's adventures in southern france here.

on blog posts and etsy connections

"Q is for Quilter" has finished  re-constructing her antique quilt top. so happy that the fabric from my shop went to such a worthy cause (sashing)!

 

and angela, another customer, sent me the link to her blog post about the the quilt top she made with my "antique baskets" quilt pattern and kit. the kit includes a selection of antique 1800s fabrics for the basket triangles.

 

my original quilt, my own design, above.

angela's version below

 

field trips in fiber is a blog that featured my shop, and that i am thrilled to discover. vicki has an etsy shop that is stocked with her hand dyed fabrics, and her blog is filled with helpful connections for quilters and fiber artists.

on the topic of blogging, in recent months i have found myself with too little time to blog. or so i have felt. but blogging is one of those magical things like exercise, meditaion, and journaling that are so easy to put off, so hard to make time for, but when you do make the time, it is so rewarding. i am much, much happier when i blog (and exercise, and journal, and meditate). thank you blog!

customer inspiration & appreciation

one of the things that i enjoy most about our online shops (other than lots of fabric at my fingertips at wholesale prices) is when our customers share the lovely things they create using supplies they got from us.

some of my favorites:

 

SpaceDog Studios on etsy made this brilliant book (i LOVE it!) after buying this set of vintage embroidered quilt blocks, circa 1930, from our shop:

 

lovely 1800s/Civil war Repro fabrics became dresses for a Kirsten doll:

 

last week a wonderful customer bought this fabric from the "Ink Well" collection by Judie Rothermel to use as sashing for an antique quilt top that she is re-making:

 

and shared her inspiring blog: Q is for quilter

the story of the quilt top starts here

a male quilter from the Netherlands purchased a custom fat quarter bundle:

and shared his blog so that i could see the grandmother's flower garden quilt he needed the fabric for:

what i like least about our shops is that my quilting and creative time is more limited, but i feel that is compensated by the beautiful inspiration i receive.

lost and found

i haven't posted for the longest time, and the reason is this: shortly after my last post, a computer glitch caused the loss of ALL the photos on our computer. over 14,000 of them. over 5 years worth of photos. yes, some are backed up in random places, but not all of them, as they should have been.

after time spent on the phone with apple, we opted to order the data rescue software, which did work, and most of them have been recovered, but now they are randomly stacked into files selected by the computer or the software, where a photo from last month is next to a photo from 5 years ago, which is next to a photo from last christmas. i am sorting through them, and have hopes of a semblance of total recovery. but there were so many photos i wanted to blog about that have not been located and stored in a proper, locatable file. and so i haven't posted. and there is so much to post about.

tashi is taking a digital photography class in high school and loving it. these photos that she took today in our backyard greeted me as i got on the computer, and i was impressed.

so here is the big leap of posting photos again.

 

 

 

etsy

etsy is so much more fun than i ever anticipated! we've been surprised to find ourselves shipping packages off to germany, australia, the netherlands, japan, and three to the UK. i feel back in touch with my antique quilt business in japan, which is a happy feeling. and i'm meeting the nicest, most interesting, incredibly creative and talented people.

one of them has me feeling very inspired.
she is expecting her eighth baby, has two fun etsy shops -

check out the adorable scripture bags on this one,
 
she also homeschools, and has a fabulous blog.
i feel honored that she is using my "squares & stripes forever" quilt kit

as a give-away prize on her blog.

a few more shops that i love:

drawingroom's shop

sweet nellie's shop

lexi is loving this:
DanaCastle's shop

look to right-hand column to see my featrued and most recent etsy shop listings.

face up to it

if you love or hate facebook, or if you are yet un-initiated into this incredibly fast growing sensation, (you, yes you! should have been included in one those three groups). you must read this witty blog post by our friend jeff. so well written. so true. yes, we are thrilled that jeff and evie have taken the plunge into facebook.

and here are my own thoughts when i first discovered facebook.

surprised & humbled

i was pleasantly surprised (very surprised) to discover that there was a link to my bl on mormontimes.com on thanksgiving day (nov.27th), and humbled that nienie's thanksgiving video was featured the same day.