Are you ready to get creative? Registration for my Fun With Freezer Paper class is now OPEN!
Denise Rutter-Lang 
Hello my quilty friends! I hope your summer has been full of sun and fun… and quilting! I have been hard at work on the class I mentioned in the last blog. Here are the promised details. The class is called Fun with Freezer Paper: 3 Techniques Using Freezer Paper and Inktense Pencils. The first class will be Saturday, October 29, in Tenino, WA (address will be provided upon registration). The class will be limited to 12 participants, so register early to secure your spot! The cost will be $60 (newsletter subscribers receive $10 off, discount code will be sent after you subscribe). The kit ($45) can be purchased at the same time as the class fee, or on the day of class. I’m so excited! I hope to see you there!
Tips and Tools
The tool I am highlighting today is my fabulous, handy, functional, and stylish 3-tier cart. In various Facebook groups, other quilters mentioned how much they like having a 3-tier cart to hold their supplies. I looked at the ones at Ikea and Target, but I was hoping for a little more. I went to Amazon next and scrolled until I found the one pictured above. What drew me to it was being able to customize the hooks and basket. I could place them where they would be most useful for organizing the tools I use for longarming. I keep it right behind me while I quilt, then can easily roll it to the side when it is time to take a photo of the completed quilting.
Walks With Luna
In the past couple years, but most acutely in the last year, I have had to deal with more stressors in my life. So have most other people- the pandemic has affected everybody. During my walks, I often think of analogies and metaphors to describe the burdens of life to help me process and deal with them. When it comes to dealing with issues in life, I think of it like each person is carrying their burdens in various sorts of bags, and the quality of the bags and how they are being carried is an indicator of how well the person is managing issues in their life. It can change from day to day, even hour to hour. Sometimes you can feel like you have contained most of your issues in a nice, rugged backpack, that is resting comfortably on your shoulders. Other days you are trying to carry handfuls of thin grocery bags that break and spill with no warning. We don’t always know the status of the bags of the people around us, or how they are managing them. Some people are good at making it seem like they have everything neatly contained in a chic Gucci handbag, when in reality they are quietly struggling with a string backpack that is cutting into their shoulders and has a hole in the bottom. Others might have a string backpack that is sturdier and more comfortable than it looks, and suits them really well. Sometimes we are struggling so much with our own bags, we are not able to help anybody else with theirs. This is all okay. It is okay to not be able to help somebody else with their burden if we are struggling with our own. It is okay to focus on managing your own bags. I used to have a sturdy backpack, which left my arms free to help others. This last year, not so much. I thought the straps on my backpack were thick, solid leather. It turns out they were made of a thin layer of faux leather covering strands of elastic that were stretched past their breaking point. My backpack fell off. Now I hug it close to my chest until I can rebuild my straps. It will take time. I am working at accepting help when it is offered from those around me who happen to have a free hand.
How are your bags today?