Romance

Ooh, a new Kaffe Fassett book:



If you're not familiar with Kaffe Fassett, you really ought to be - even if you never go near a quilt. His palettes would make lovely color schemes for jewelry, if nothing else. (I doubt that I'm the first person to think of that.) And his fabric is absolutely delicious.

Kaffe Fassett flickr groups:
items made using his fabric or yarn or patterns
Kaffe Fassett Love - I think these are just more 'Kaffe Fassett style'

Dying with the most toys

Oh y'all. This is about quilts, but I think every crafter can identify. It also makes me think of my mother, who spent most of her time during the last 10 years of her life making quilt after quilt after quilt. Of course, in many ways, that lady wasn't like my mother at all, since my mother had a significant other and tons of friends, not to mention me hanging around all the time. And my mother was also a big finisher, generally, and didn't leave many things unfinished at all. But still... I feel like I knew this woman.

I still have a ton of fabric. I have some of my mother's, but I also have plenty of my own. And it's going to be a while before I'm ready to part with that - even if I don't sew a single stitch (and I haven't in over a year now), I can't imagine letting go of much fabric any time soon. And of course there is my ever-expanding collection of beads. Ever, ever expanding, let me tell you. (I haven't even mentioned the Fire Mountain order that's somewhere in transit, for example.) I partly started the whole Etsy thing as a way to destash, although I think it's a big failure on that score; it just gave me an excuse to buy more stuff, instead.

I guess almost every crafter is a hoarder. Once I was at a quilt class, and somebody in the class said that she didn't have a stash, that she only bought exactly what she needed for each project and no more. Let me tell you, it was comical, watching everybody else's jaws drop. I think people like that are very very much a minority. (And what, she didn't buy any extra at all in case of mismeasurement and mistakes and such? What did she do with anything left over? Throw it away?)

I was primarily a scrap quilter - I didn't like things to be too matchy. Which meant there was essentially no way to operate without a stash. I do this to some degree with beads, too - at least, I like to make things that have an assortment of beads. For example, I really like these little earrings:

The beads don't really have anything in common except color, but I think it works. (I don't generally take this so far as to make my earrings really asymmetrical. Mostly I like pairs!)

Here's one of my "scrap" quilts: I collected greens for ages, and then chopped them up and this was what I ended up with. There are no repeated fabrics in this.

(I never have quilted this - it's still just the quilt top. I really am gonna have to do that one of these days.)

Patterns and details

I worked on my skull necklace some last night. Part of me wants to stop here and call it finished, but another part of me is not convinced. I suspect that it is still going to undergo some more changes. (There is a picture of it on LJ and flickr and they should be making their way over here soon, but I'm not going to stop to find it right now. I am on a break from studying so I shouldn't take too long about this.)

I have been adding lots of jewelry blogs to my "follow" list, which I think you can see if you look at my profile, right? I have to get used to Blogger again, I haven't used it in a while. (I will add the Followers widget when I have some followers, which I don't right now. I am confident that some people will wander along, eventually, though.) Right now the ones I have are inclined to be heavy on the seed-bead people, which is not my thing to make, really, but I love to look at it. It's an awful lot like I was with applique when I was making quilts, actually - I admire it, I love to look at it, I just don't do it. I've already done more with seed beads than I ever did with applique, but the principle still applies. I'm just not a detail person, and those little bitty beads and little bitty applique stitches both give me a headache.

I'm not even sure it's true that I'm not a detail person, now that I think about it. I fuss around about the details of things, that's not it. I just like to start with more simple projects, I guess you'd say. And I'm not really into following patterns, and for seed beads and applique, both, you pretty much have to follow a pattern, or make your own. I love to look at books and magazines full of patterns for beautiful jewelry - but I rarely really follow the pattern. Often I use the pattern as sort of a guide, and I may come out with something sort of similar to the pattern but not exactly. I don't know how common this is. I know from quilting that some people seem to be much more inclined to really stick with patterns than I am, though.

Anybody out there? What do you think?