A present in a pear bowl.

Dear friends,

Last week was grueling. I worked six straight days that each spanned 12-14 hours, leaving home before anyone else had awakened and arriving home just as my boys were bedding down.

One night I came home and found a package awaiting me on my kitchen desk. Carefully wrapped in brown paper and sent by USPS from my friend Maridel, I had a hunch what it contained. Given my schedule, though, it was yesterday morning before I even had a chance to unwrap it.

It was totally worth the wait . . . A trio of pears to complement my own (featured here), each more lovely than the last. Here’s my favorite:

It’s made from a vintage fabric kitchen calendar. It’s beautiful, and charming, and perfect in a way I never could have imagined before it landed on my counter.

Here’s all of them, in a bowl on my kitchen island as if I might wish to choose one to eat.

I couldn’t be more delighted with my quartet of stitched pears. If you’d like to know more about the artist, just click here.

With gratitude {for gifts from the atelier and from the heart},

Joan, who thinks presents made by hand and sent through the mail are a brand of 0ld-fashioned divine that can’t be matched

No experience necessary. Unless you want to finish.

Dear friends,

I’m not sure why I thought with no instructions and no experience whatsoever I could become a quilter overnight.

I’m one of those people who is blessed with confidence. I’m convinced I could have been an architect or a filmmaker or a novelist (to name but three professions I believe I’m suited for) if only I had tried. That I ended up in my current (unnamed) profession that’s really nothing like those I just named has more to do with the vagaries of decisions made in my 20s than talent. Or that’s the story I tell myself. Still, I’m smart enough to know that if I woke up tomorrow and decided to actually become an architect, I would need education and training.

So nothing explains why I saw this quilt on the internet  and — even though the pattern isn’t identified and I’m breathtakingly inexperienced at this sort of thing — went to bed Saturday night thinking I was going to wake up Sunday morning and make my own pattern and construct myself a quilt. Forget the fact that I’ve never taken a class on quilting, nor read an instruction booklet, nor even watched a video tutorial.  “I can wing it,” I thought.

The thing about winging it is that it’s not the fastest way from point A to point B, usually.

Try not to laugh out loud, but it took me about four hours to produce that single quilt block shown in the photo. Actually, I LAUGHED out loud as I typed that last sentence. Because if you look at the picture, it looks so simple, right? It’s eight little pieces of fabric, for Pete’s sake, and there’s not even any weird curves or points.

I thought about the quilt quite a bit as I fell asleep the night before. I had it figured out in my head, or so I thought.

Turns out, figuring it out in real life is very different than in your head.

I did everything wrong. I measured wrong, I cut the fabric wrong, I stitched the wrong sides together, I pieced it wrong, and I even ironed it wrong. (Who knew there was a right way to iron until I took a break and watched a couple of online tutorials for simpler patterns?)

And in the middle of stitching all those wrong pieces, I even threaded my bobbin wrong (because I ran out of thread and it’s a new machine and, of course, I didn’t read the instruction booklet on how to wind my bobbin).

The upside to making every mistake possible is that you eventually stumble on to doing it the right way. (The ol’ blind squirrel theory applies to crafting, I suppose.)

Anyway, now . . . now I think I’ve got it! The finished block is 1″ smaller than I imagined, but who cares? It’s not like I’m following a pattern.

I’m hoping that next weekend I can make several blocks. I need 42 to make a full-size quilt, which is the size I’m going for unless continued extemporaneous stitchery leads me elsewhere.

With gratitude {for improvisation skills learned in high school speech and drama},

Joan, who in the interest of full disclosure wants you to know she intends to make a quilt top, which she’ll ship off to somebody else for the actual act of quilting, an activity she has no desire to master anytime soon

Because why not get a head start?

Dear friends,

I know spring just sprung and all, but I spent Saturday feeling all summery.

It was sunny and 70 degrees. Mr. Mom and I went for a long drive near the Big Piney with our sunroof open and our windows down. We stopped after an hour and ate two big platefuls of pan fried chicken at a truck-stop diner, then found an antiques store where we whiled away another hour. It was the best Saturday afternoon I’ve had in a very long time (and I’ve got two gorgeous, pink china plates to prove it). Lordy, lordy my soul needed the sunshine and the quiet time with my favorite companion.

You know what other summery thing I did? Before we hit the road, I made an adorable red-white-and-blue pennant banner. It will be Memorial Day before you know it and I’ll be itching to remake my Easter-decked buffet.

Here’s what my newest banner looks like in full.

It was super-simple, thanks to this tutorial from my new favorite fabric source. I modified the instructions a bit, opting for a rod pocket instead of muslin ties on my flags,  and I machine stitched everything rather than hand stitching. The pennants were easy enough to figure out on my own. I simply cut out hand-drawn triangles, stitched around the edges (so I could fringe them), stitched ric-rac across the tops (leaving room for a fold-over pocket to hang them by), stitched the pockets, then glued on fabric letters that I traced and cut out. (Before cutting out the letters, I ironed fusible interfacing on the backs to give them a little more stiffness.) From start to finish, I made the entire banner in about three hours.

All in all, it was a great way to spend a day, a pretend-summer day in April.

With gratitude {for adventures on the road and at the sewing machine},

Joan, who’s insistent on getting her money’s worth out of her new sewing machine

First I swooned. Then I stitched.

Dear friends,

While searching the internet recently for embroidery inspiration, I stumbled across this creation . . . so charming, so lovely, so startlingly original that I swooned.

Source: Etsy

For days, I was obsessed with the notion of a stuffed pear. In the same way I get obsessed with an elaborate dessert and plan it over and over again in my head, I was inspired by this delightful combination of crazy quilting, embroidery and fiber art. I was determined to replicate the design.

So I spent Saturday afternoon making a prototype. Because I had no idea if I my experiment would be a rousing success or a colossal failure, I kept it simple — where simple equals starting at 1:30 pm and finishing at 7:30 pm. So, yeah, even simple art takes time. But I was happy with the result.

I had no idea before today that six hours stitching nothing more than a pincushion (or a windowsill tchotchke) could be such a pleasant way to spend an afternoon. Had I adorned my pear as lavishly as the inspiration photo, I would have spent two or three afternoons stitching. Today, I just wanted to finish. To know whether or not my fading eyesight and increasingly stiff fingers could pull off such a thing. The answer, apparently, is yes, so next time I’ll take all the time I need to bling my baby up.

Speaking of next time, I recently ducked into a flea market on my way home from work and found a vintage quilt for a song. It was terribly tattered around the edges and ripped down one side. But at $17, enough of the quilt was intact that I couldn’t pass it up, especially since the top was made from a lovely shade of faded cotton the exact color of Jadite. (If you read this post last year, you know I have a kitchen full of Jadite dishes. The serene seafoam color associated with these vintage dishes is a shade I simply can’t resist.)

I envisioned cutting up my tattered quilt for a number of craft projects, including another pear pincushion. But before I cut into my vintage treasure, I had to know I could pull it off.  Today’s prototype pear made from inexpensive fat quarters purchased at Wal-Mart gave me the courage I need to stretch my sewing wings a bit more.  Now I’ve got more designs than I can keep up with swimming through my mind, all competing for my limited weekend  crafting time.

The good news is I won’t be bored for pretty much the rest of my life.

With gratitude {for my kickin’ new sewing machine, limitless inspiration, and enough spare time to pursue my textile dreams vigorously},

Joan, who thinks the internet is the coolest thing ever for crafters and is especially grateful to the lovely people who post free patterns and tutorials like this one

Love.

Dear friends,

You know what I love in January?

I love a national holiday that gives me a Monday off.

I love easy craft projects like Valentine’s pennant banners strung with heart-shaped twinkly lights.

I love afternoon naps under wool blankets when it’s 20 degrees outside.

I love being home all day with my boys.

I love chicken thighs cooked in wine and butter and then braised for several hours with mushrooms and leeks and brussel sprouts for supper.

And, I love a workweek that’s 20% complete before it ever begins.

With gratitude {for all of these things on a bright January day},

Joan, who can’t seem to reconcile her love for homespun pennant banners with her modern house and has given up trying