Around the World Blog Hop

Last week, I had two lovely ladies honor me by tagging me in the Around the World Blog Hop. Thank you Alison and Michelle for thinking of me! :)

Now, you might be asking yourself, what is the Around the World Blog Hop? (You probably aren't since this is undoubtedly the fiftieth post you've seen on the subject, but perhaps a few of you don't know.) I answer a set of four questions, nominate a couple of lovely peeps, and then, next Monday, they'll have the honor of answering the same questions and nominating some more lovely peeps. Awesome, right? 

What am I working on? 

Oh, boy. My list is a little out of hand, mostly because I've started thinking about holiday gifts for family and friends, and that always makes the list about a gazillion miles long.

This baby-sized ikat quilt is intended for my friend's bun-in-the-oven. I pieced together a backing with scraps and an awesome animal print, but apparently I deleted the photo after I posted it to instagram. (Gonna have to be careful about not doing that in the future.) I need to get this bad boy quilted and bound, but I have a Turkey Day deadline, so I've got some time.

I've also got a Tula Pink City Sampler quilt in the making (I've made 75 blocks) and a Gypsy Wife quilt too. Everything else on my list is smaller: placemats, which my four-year-old son is helping me piece and quilt, kidlet aprons for birthday gifts, cloth napkins for my sister, and if I can, I have big plans to sneak in another dress for me, this time made with linen. Woo.

How does my work differ from others of its genre? 

Because my quilts are made by a hot pink girl? 

Friends, I dunno. I make what I want to make. I tend to go overboard with bold colors, and I adore large scale patterns, and that's the way I like it. (My more demure quilts are my least favorite.) I embrace a "good enough" philosophy because I quilt as a hobby and don't want to stress out about achieving perfection. That doesn't mean I neglect my seam ripper--we are good friends--but at some point, it needs to be done, right? I don't spend a lot of time comparing/contrasting my work with others, just because if I start going in that direction, I wallow in thoughts like "why am I not as awesome as XYZ person?" So I don't think about it, and that keeps me in the positive. However, it also makes answering this question near impossible.

Why do I write/create what I do?

I write because I have to.

That sounds melodramatic, but the urge to write has been with me since I learned my letters. When I was a kid, this need manifested in the form of mystery plays. (My mom took me to see a mystery murder play when I was young, and it severely colored my writing.) In high school, I wrote a really bad fantasy novel about a martial arts-loving princess with lavender hair. In college, I studied creative writing and wrote a bunch of bad short stories with thinly veiled symbolism and emo-sounding titles. At the end of my four years, I had published a short story and a poem that weren't bad. And when I started my first big girl job and supervised the gifts and stationary department for three bookstores, I would spend my weekends hunched over my keyboard because writing was the only way I could unwind. I started writing a five book YA series, which I'm still working on.

So when I started quilting, it was inevitable that I would document my experience in the written form. I'm glad to have a record of what I've accomplished since I've started sewing, and it has enabled so many fun relationships. I'm thrilled to have met so many lovelies since I started.

How does my writing/creating process work?

I don't have a particular way of doing things. Sometimes I write in huge chunks where I feel like I'm vomiting words on the page. Sometimes I write in an orderly, scheduled manner. The same thing with creating. Sometimes it's planned and happens in perfectly sectioned off blocks of time. Other times, I absolutely have to work on something and finish it, so I keep working frantically until I get it done. Case in point, I just finished a 241 tote for me--woo!--and I was trying so desperately to get it done before the baby woke up. Of course, he woke up demanding food when I had only the last bit of topstitching left. If he had waited another TWO minutes, I would've been done, but that's a different story, right? And it all got done anyway.

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I get the pleasure of tagging two additional people, woo! I'm tagging Aoife of thREDhead. Besides being super lovely and awesome, Aoife is Irish, but she currently lives in Texas. I can always expect to see a variety of awesome projects from her: sometimes apparel, sometimes EPP, sometimes fun pillows, sometimes yummy rainbow quilt tops.

AND

Anna from The Crooked Banana. Anna is fabulous, and not just because she started the Fierce Quilters Bee. She also hails from the southwest, and since I'm a desert girl, I feel that's a pretty awesome deal. Anna rocks yarn, fabric, pretty much all the things.