Alive…

So…

It’s been several eternities since I’ve posted here, hasn’t it???

The big reason is that I’ve needed to spend a lot more time on family things, some great, some complicated. We’ve transitioned the family back across the Atlantic with the endless list of accompanying complexities, and we’ve traveled all over Europe. We’ve learned about lockdown procedures in American schools, and watched Babbit learn about a zillion new words every day. We’ve tried to figure out the inner workings of the six-year-old mind, and marveled at the wonderful machinations of that same six-year-old mind. I know that six months seems an eternity in the life of a blog, but from this side that time has seemed an ridiculous, joyous, terrible, frantic, infuriating, and extraordinary blur…

At last, though, things seem to be returning to some degree of normalcy, whatever that might actually be in my life. Earlier this week I finally pulled my trusty Janome out of the attic and started sewing again. It isn’t that I’ve put all this quilting stuff aside over the past six months; there just hasn’t been the time to actually make. Trust me; there has been a lot going on behind the scenes. Perhaps I should bring you all up to date…

Over the summer I did a segment with Sew with Nancy, which will air on PBS later this month. No, I didn’t fly back for it; we used the wonders of the Interwebs and Skype to chat trans-Atlantically. I’ll let you all know when I have an actual air date and we can see if I was at all coherent (imagine asking me to say anything in just five minutes).

In November I’ll be heading out to the western part of the county to do workshops with the modern guilds in the Denver area, including my favorite workshop: a museum tour and design master class. While in Denver I’ll be taping with The Quilt Show (with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims) and a few segments with QNNTV. Yep kids, they are trusting me on video. Considering I used the word crap about a dozen times in one paragraph during an interview with Love Patchwork and Quilting over in the UK they may need to get that beep button out. (Fingers crossed.)

While out there I’ll also be zipping down to do a lecture and workshops for the Arizona statewide quilt guild, which should be a blast. I get four days to work with them and talk about stuff; that seems like my kind of timeframe as it usually takes me about a day to say hello.

Oh, and then after all of that I am popping out to SLC to do a week-long residency at HandiQuilter. I’m working on a suite of marriage quilts that I’ll be taking advantage of the wonders of computerized long-arming to do virtually impossible quilting based on translating the wedding vows my wife and I used into Morse code, Braille, binary, and forms. You have no idea how excited I am about this, and hope to work with HQ for years to come.

quilts

I’ll also be doing a weekend at the Schweinfurth Art Center (home of Quilting by the Lake) with Jacquie Gering in December, and will be doing workshops and talks all over the country in the coming year, including a whole set of things in Chicago next March. I also hope to work more and more with Olde City Quilts just outside of Philly on the Jersey side; I have fallen in love with that place and with teaching there. Oh, and Judy and Rob are just awesome…

Of course, I’ve kept up with my Quilter’s Newsletter columns and have done a couple of quilts for Quilty and Love of Quilting. Still chugging along with all the stuff even if it seems like I’ve disappeared. Heck, don’t be surprised if there is more fabric coming from me in 2015, but that is still a secret (though maybe not so secret anymore). Just think awesome, and designy, and distinctly not your typical American collection…

So, there has been much afoot over here behind the scenes. The children have been growing, new collaborations are coming together, and taken a much needed break from the world of social media. As much as I love my friends on the Intertubes, a few things have happen out here in SM land that have left me needing to step away for a while. I probably won’t become that prolific blogger that I once was; I’ve grown far more guarded, a reality I don’t regard as a good thing, but a needed one. The reality of having two children now also just doesn’t afford me the time. And finally, I am just going to be too crazy busy for the foreseeable future: so many quilts to make, things to design, essays to write, and, of course, I need to get thinking about that next book.

Hmm… I think it might be time for my own TV show too, perhaps. What do you think: me, some elemental quilting shapes, and a design wall? Quilt design master classes broadcast out for the universe; you know you want more gestalt design theory in your lives…

More later, but for now I have five more tops to bang out before the end of the month because there is gonna be a whole lot of quilting going on at HandiQuilter.

-t

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