Happy Thanksgiving

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We had about 25 people, friends and family, together at my house. (this is just half of the happy group) It’s kind of hard to believe that we are just around the corner from another new year. In spite of all the “doom and gloom” and dire predictions on the news, we still have much to be thankful for. Yesterday, surrounded by my family, I felt very fortunate indeed.. and I am still doing what I love to do . . . quilling. You would think that after 35 years, I would be tired of quilling, but I’m not. There is always another challenge. This summer I quilled lots of wedding invitations, some are pretty routine, but I even enjoy doing those. I can just “veg out” while I am making roses or the dozens of teardrops for flower petals. I still get a kick out of seeing a design come together.




Often, people ask me where I get the ideas for my designs. Sometimes they come easily. You just look at it and there it is, other times it can be a real challenge. A customer will call and say “I have a wedding invitation, but it’s kind of different . . . I don’t know what you will be able to do with it”. There’s the anticipation of waiting to see what it will look like. I had one like that this summer. The shape and size of the invitation was anything BUT routine; a horizontal, long, and narrow invitation and it was a beach wedding! So I just started making shapes and sea shells and then finally figured out how I was going to put it all together. I actually loved the finished piece and wished I had made a copy of the invite so I could make another for a sample. I did take a picture though, even though purples aren’t my favorite colors, I absolutely love the way they all work together.

Another piece that ended up being a challenge was a floral bouquet I did that was going to be given as a gift to the leader of a Bible study group. There was a deadline and we did everything over the phone and emails. Because it was long distance, it really became a challenge. I was only doing the quilling which is kind of unusual. Usually I determine the size, cut the mat, do the framing etc. The mat was going to have a Bible verse in calligraphy that went all the way around the mat. The calligrapher did the verse so the mat had to be horizontal in order to read the saying, so all of my plans for long graceful flower stems went out the window. Fortunately, I made the flowers but didn’t start gluing anything down until the very last minute. So the bouquet became a basket of flowers since there was no room for stems. The finished piece actually looked quite nice although I didn’t get a picture of the mat with the calligraphy. Inspiration comes in many forms