Hi

I keep waffling about actually taking the plunge and writing here, so I'm just making myself do it. July's not too late to follow through on a New Year's resolution, right?

My name is Liz. I'm 29 years old. Up until last year, I was a graduate student, and now I'm figuring out what comes next. Around February 2013, I started to dive deep into the online world of quilting. Before I knew it, I was amassing a fabric stash and starting to tackle a few patterns, largely through hand piecing. I may or may not elect to share my wonky early churn dash blocks in a post of their own. Right now, I've got an active list of about two dozen works in progress, in varying degrees of proximity to completion, plus countless other ideas germinating. I hope to use this space to talk through some of my ideas, and share what I'm working on as I'm working on it.

Some goals:

 - I want to write about hand piecing, even though it's relatively slow going. I can't quite seem to stop adding works in progress, and I've got lots of ideas, even if finishing comes less frequently than it might with machine work. However, I love the quiet, meditative practice of it. And I think it should be asserted, and repeated: You don't need a machine to start quilting.

 - I want to be a more active participant in the community of people who write about what they're doing creatively - sharing what I'm working on and commenting on what others share. I've dipped my toes in on Instagram - and maybe it's crazy to step it up to a more text-y medium when so many people seem to be going the other way and scaling down from blogging - and want to expand further. I'm daring myself to join link-ups and share my opinion, and hope to get some good feedback from the wide world of crafters in turn.

 - I'm going to reacquaint myself with the sewing machine. I first learned to use a machine back in middle school Home Ec - and sewed a pretty cute stuffed animal if I do say so myself - but now that's over fifteen years ago! While I enjoy the calm and quiet of working by hand, I also feel like I have too many ideas and not enough time to tackle them. I'd also love to make garment sewing part of what I do, and obviously that one requires the machine. My tentative goals for the rest of this calendar year are to a) attempt a garment and to b) install a zipper in something, maybe a bag. We'll see how that dovetails with my massive list of WIPs.

- Maybe figure out some more graphic design stuff? I have no idea whether this blog template will frame my images well or not, but hope to be able to tweak with some confidence if I decide it's not working.

- I want to submit a quilt to the Bloggers Quilt Festival. I can't say right now whether I'll have anything in decent enough shape for this fall, but I'm keeping that one as a soft deadline for some finished work.

So, here it goes.