You won't believe what I'm trying to do

I woke up this morning and quickly seized on these 3 points.

1.  I slept really well for a change.

2.  It's March and I missed blogging in February.

3. I hate Facebook.

The first is probably the most important to my life as I've been having a lot of back pain.  I have a chronic condition though I've gone months  or even years before without pain at night.  The last couple of years though it has been worse and sometimes, like lately, I can't remember the last night I didn't wake up at some point in pain.  Last night I elevated the head of the bed just a few inches.  Will this work going forward?  Am I inviting the curvature in my spine that my father had?  All I care about today is that I feel good!

How this led to remembering my neglected blog, I don't recall but it did.  I don't think I've ever missed a month and I missed the one with my 12th anniversary of the blog, too.  Why don't I blog more?  Do people still read blogs? I used to read a lot more but I stopped as it became more difficult to keep up with them.  When Google got rid of whatever it was we used to hop around from blog to blog, I tried another app but didn't like it and just fell out of the habit of reading them.  This got me to thinking of alternatives. I love Instagram, but we seldom say much to go with our pretty photos.  Twitter is limited on the amount of content and ... oh, speaking of Instagram, that red headed woodpecker I photographed and posted a few days ago is back on my bird feeder just now.  He's more gorgeous than ever.  Anyway, this all led me to Facebook which is where I think people babble on about their lives and that led me to the inevitable...

I hate Facebook.  I've always hated it from the first time I tried it, the same year I started blogging, coincidentally.  I could tell you all the reasons but my fingers would get very tired of typing.  To try to summarize, it's a terribly written app and has evolved into a place of hurt feelings, meaningless connections, and misinformation.  Plus I now know what some of my 'friends' and family really think about the world and their fellow men and women. It's as disheartening as it is disorganized.

So I'm back to the blog for my babble.  And that brings me to writing about what I've been doing creatively.  (I've been doing a lot of non-creative things like taxes, cleaning and organizing but you don't want to hear about that.)

I have made a lot of things in my life particularly with needle and thread but this time I'm doing something I've never done before and really never heard of anyone else doing.  For 16 years in the late 90's through 2013, I made custom window treatments.  Fabrics came from various distributors or sometimes from fabric stores.  Twice I made treatments from beautiful fabrics customers had acquired on trips to Europe - their trips, not mine. I combined fabrics in creative ways to make interesting bands on draperies, pillows and other bedding. But I never made my own fabric, until now.

Samples made to experiment with threads and designs

Now, I'm not actually making the fabric itself.  I'm embroidering plain fabric with my sewing machine - 12 yards of it!  

Why am I doing this?  Well, I just couldn't buy what I wanted.  It's gotten awfully hard to find fabric anymore.  There are few places selling it by the bolt and I've been to all I know of in the area over the last few months. I've looked online and I brought home numerous sample books and spent far too much time at a decorator showroom looking for fabric for the dining room.

So am I asking for the impossible?  Apparently.  I wanted a lightweight fabric I could leave unlined, embroidered with neutrals that would match my room particularly gold, preferably in a more modern print.  I really had my heart set on having gold embroidery.  Of course, I had an upper price limit but even stretching that limit a lot didn't get me the criteria.  If a fabric had gold in it, nothing else matched my room with now taupe/gray floors.  The closest I came was one for $60 per yard that had some pale gold, would have had to be lined and was awfully traditional in design.  It seemed foolish to go above my price limit for something I really didn't like.  So I didn't.

Completed panels will go on either side of this door.

I ordered 12 yards of white linen/cotton fabric and I'm using my Pfaff sewing machine to add embroidery stitches to create a more modern, fresh look for my dining room. And yes, it is taking forever!  No wonder my back hurts.

Portion of one panel

I've done some other creative things this winter but this project has taken over my craft room and my free time.

I certainly hope to have this done before my next blog anniversary.  If all goes well, maybe by the end of this month.  In the meantime, my papercrafting table sits fairly idle while my sewing machine is practically smoking!

If I take a notion to share my projects, I'll update my blog.  As usual, there will be a link on Twitter, Instagram, and yes, even Facebook.  Thanks for reading!