Tina – Currently Clueless

So it’s been a long time since I last posted. A very long time. I don’t even dare to look back and see what the last post was, but I’m guessing it’s probably about 18 months or so.

A lot has happened to me over the last 18 months, and I’d like to say it’s all been good, but the truth is, life has not been kind, to myself or my family. There have been losses – oh so many losses, and sickness and just much, much heartache. I’ll admit, that most of the heartache has been my own, which I will get into later, but not this post. This post is about good things.

Like quilting.

I may have been having a pretty crap time of it, but I’m happy to say that I’ve still been quilting (and crocheting) up a storm. And then, I joined the Modern Quilt Guild. That was a shining moment for me, the day that I got my MQG pin. It sits proudly on my desk, next to my computer so I can see it all the time. It cheers me up. To know that I belong to a group of people around the world who all love to quilt. And create.

So I happily signed up for my first Fabric Challenge back in February – creating a quilted product out of some Michael Miller prints. It was exciting, being forced to extend my creativity and make a quilt out of fabrics not of my choosing. Exciting, but daunting.

When I received them, my first thought was, I would never in a million years pick those fabrics out in the store – just what am I going to do with them. But that thought was short lived, the fabrics just lent themselves to an idea I’d had floating around in my head for some time – creating a quilt that showed my move from the city, to the country – my home, a place I could never imagine not living in anymore. So I sat down, and started drawing up my design, and ordered more fabrics to go along with what I had already recieved. And then I started sewing – curves, lots of curves. Something I don’t really ever work with. But it was fun.

And then life got in the way again and things made me sad. I put the quilt away and forgot all about it. I’d lost the will to do the quilt and I didn’t love anything let alone my beautiful city I call home.

But eventually, the fog lifted and over the last week and a bit I pulled it out again and just like that, I had the perfect idea on just what I wanted to do with my quilt. I wanted to make something that was beautiful that I could hang up on my wall and remind myself that while there are always going to be black times, there will always come a time when the happiness is going to push that blackness in my heart away.

So again, I sat down, and quickly drew up my design (and I have to give a huge shout-out here to Caro Sheridan and her fantastic Craftsy course – Pictures to Pixel Quilts, for teaching me everything I ever needed to know about creating my own pixel quilt and working out how many squares I’d actually need. THANK YOU, your class was uber awesome) and got cutting and quilting.

So I ended up with a quilt that comes directly from my heart and I’ve called it “Time heals all heartache” – because I truly hope that is the truth.

The quilt measure 50″ by 73″ and is a two sided 2″ square pixel quilt. On the one side is heartache overwhelming everything. The black (sadness) in the heart is taking over the colour (happiness) and pushing it out. But when the quilt is flipped over, the happiness is fighting back and pushing that blackness out and up and away.

The quilt front - sadness overtaking the happiness and pushing it out of my heart. — The quilt front – sadness overtaking the happiness and pushing it out of my heart. (Click for a larger view)

Close up of the front heart. (Click for a larger view)

The quilting was done by me on my Janome 2160DC and is quilted in a clock face. It is 60 lines – each representing a minute – to reflect that time heals.

I’ve made this quilt mostly to be a wall hanging – I don’t intend to use it as a lap quilt, but as an art piece. Oh. And in the end? I’m so glad that these fabrics were given to me to participate with. Because while I might never have actually chosen them, they worked so well with my idea and I actually really love them now. (Secretly, very glad that I ordered extra and have leftovers that I can make something else with).

The back of the quilt, where the happiness is taking over and pushing out the hurt and sadness. (Click for a larger view)

A close up of the back, and the line quilting. (Click for a larger view)

I really hope you all love this quilt as much as I do, and I am really looking forward to getting back into my quilting with a vengeance and back into the blogging again. Now that I’m in here and typing away, I realise just how much I’ve missed it. I also intend on taking some better pictures tomorrow or over the weekend, but it’s late and dark and cold and raining outside, so those photos just weren’t happening tonight.

Happy New Year everyone. I hope that 2012 was a good year for you all and that 2013 will be an even better year for everyone.

I’ve spent the last few days going over the past year in my head and thinking about what I would like to achieve over the next 12 months (and beyond that as well), in all aspects of my life – not just fitness and food related goals. There are so many things that I would love to do, but I know that I can’t achieve all the things I would like to do, so I’ve had to pare my list down a little, to make it achievable. I didn’t really accomplish what I set out to last year (isn’t that the story for so many of us), in fact, I rarely accomplish my new years resolutions. To see just how much I didn’t accomplish, you can take a look at last year’s resolutions here. I think you will note by the lack of blogging over the year, the fact that my weight is only a few kilos less than when I started 2012 off and the fact that I haven’t written about my fantastic day swimming with the sharks, that I didn’t accomplish much on that list. Again…. So do I think that I’m going to be more successful this year? Of course, I have to say yes, isn’t that what we always do? Do I really believe that? Partly yes, and partly no. I would like to believe that I’m going to be more successful at achieving my goals, but I know what I’m like and the reality is that a lot of my goals will slip by the wayside pretty darn tootin’ quickly. But I will attempt, once again, to make goals and stick to them. So what are they for this year?

Blog more.
I love blogging, I love the feeling of release it gives me and the ability to get things off my chest, usually without harming anyone except myself. Sometimes though, I find it so hard to write down what I’m feeling that I bottle it all up and then it gets too hard to come back to it. But this year, I would like to blog about anything and everything, whether it’s good news or bad. If I feel it’s something I can’t share, then maybe it’s time I put to good use the fact that I can make my posts private! Blogging is good for the soul!
Eat healthy and exercise more.
These two need to go hand in hand with each other, they’re like black and white, the sun and the moon – you can’t have one without the other. Of course, I want to eat healthy and exercise more so that I can lose weight. I have about 40kg still to lose (hmmm about what I started 2012 off with – see my earlier comment about resolutions going undone!). I’d like to think I can do that in the next 12 months, but rather than say that, I would like to further add to this goal by saying that a sub-goal of mine is to:
- Have steady weight-loss
  This is as opposed to having a set amount of weight I would like to lose this year. Of course, I would love to lose all 40kg this year, but more importantly, I want to get off this yo-yo merry-go-round. I would like to lose weight consistently this year. Not down, then up, then down, down, down then up again. Just a gradual down. If it takes me 12 months, or 24 months to lose my weight, then so be it, so long as it’s on that downward spiral only.
- Have a steady exercise routine
  Just as I am always up and down with my weight, I’m also up and down with my exercise routine. It’s either all or nothing for me, which quite frankly, the older I get the harder I find it to cope with one week increasing my fitness, only to then slack off and six weeks later try and get back into it, feeling like every second I’m about to have a heart attack. So steady, regular exercise is going to be my mantra for this year. I have decided to join in on a goal of doing 2013 kilometers in 2013 – this can be done by either walking, running, cycling, swimming, or climbing. It’s doable, IF I am consistent.
Finish off my quilting and crochet projects.
I have so many on the go at the moment, I really need to pull my finger out and get them finished. It’s just slackness that stops me. So no more excuses.
Read more.
I love reading, but last year I found that I didn’t do much of it at all. So this year, I want to take a few hours each week and dedicate it solely to just sitting back with my Kindle and relaxing with a good book. Whether it’s a crime novel that keeps me on the edge of my chair in suspense, or even just a trashy romance novel that makes me smile at the end of it, it doesn’t matter, so long as I’m taking that time out to just enjoy reading again.
Be more organised around home.
I wish I was one of these women who was just a natural homebody who kept an immaculate house and didn’t get narky with her partner if he left her to do all the work. I’m not. I do get narky when M leaves me to do most of the housework, to the point where sometimes, I will just leave the dishes sitting in the sink for a few days out of spite. If he’s not going to put them in the dishwasher (oh yes, we have a dishwasher, I don’t even have to clean them myself…. slack aren’t I!) then why should I? This year, my aim is to keep a cleaner, more organised home. (We’ll start that one tomorrow though hmmmmm).

And last, but by no means least –

Save more.
We want to buy our own home. But that’s not going to happen if I don’t stick to my budget. So this year, my aim is to create my budget (done, can check that off the list already) and to stick to it, so we can save enough and finally buy a house. I don’t even care at this point if it’s only a small one bedroom place, so long as it’s ours, though really, two bedrooms would be so much better!

So those are my goals for this year. I have a few more, but to me these ones are the important ones. The ones I need to put out there, to you all, in the hopes that you will help keep me honest and on track with them. Let’s see how I go this year. I’m looking forward to my next resolution re-cap in twelve months, hopefully checking these off the list.

Articles by Tina

Time heals all heartache

Welcome 2013