International Quilt Festival and its Effects

The International Quilt Festival, held in Houston TX, has become an annual event for my two sisters and our Mom. Every year, we gather from where ever we live (TX and NY) and spend some wonderful 'girl-time' together. We giggle a lot, share family stories and revel in the joy of just being together in an incredibly creative environment.

Every year we come back inspired to achieve new heights with our business and crafts. And every year we usually fail to accomplish all that we were inspired to do.

This year my sister Mary Ellen, the one on the right, found this wonderful article that can be used by all of us when we return from a life-changing event. And make no mistake, this yearly quilt show is a Life-Changing Event for us all. I know this article helped me continue the joy and creativity of the Festival.

Read the following article, published by ©2009 Vicky White, The Feng Shui and Raw Food Coach. Get Vicky White’s FREE “5 Biggest Attraction Mistakes ” report and her FREE articles to boost your passion, purpose and creativity at: : www.LifeDesignStrategies.com

Article: Essential Feng Shui strategies to ensure you're not a three-day wonder!

When they take a drug addict into detox they know better than to put him back in the same environment - same colored walls, same friends, same room.

Have you ever been to a workshop or a personal growth event and felt your life had changed? You're away from home, away from distractions, surrounded by others who are going for it. As you drive down your street to go home everything looks different.

How do you ensure your changes are not just a two or three day wonder - you know what that's like: come home on a high with notes and information and all kinds of good intentions for BEING different and creating different results? If you live with others, more than likely you don't make a lot of sense when you try to explain what you got of out the event, or how you've evolved. They might even feel threatened by you sweeping in with all your enthusiasm for the changes you want to make NOW.

You look around your home and all kinds of things seem out of place or no longer a good fit. I feel compelled to declutter my books and rearrange them right now! The reason for this compulsion to declutter is that your environment represents who you are - or in this case, who you were. Before you left home your environment and your own energy were a pretty good match.

When you make shifts within, if the energy of your environment doesn't change, it will pull you back into your old patterns. It will be a challenge to really anchor your shifts and move forward as the new you.

8 Tips to Anchor your Shifts and Changes so they don't disappear.

1. Hear the urge to declutter, to clean out your closet, or repaint your office, on returning from a life changing experience? It's your spirit calling for the energy in your home to step up into a higher vibration. If you don't feel the urge, take a look around and feel the energy - what's not a good match for the new you? The sooner you can let go of what no longer fits (and there will be things!), the faster you can integrate your changes.

2. Move the furniture around - furniture that stays in the same place starts to create stagnant energy. Even moving it a few inches will shake up the energy in your environment and energize your space. And energized space supports an energized YOU!

3. Put your travel things away - you're staying, right? This new you is staying too. It used to be that I'd empty my suitcase onto the floor and from there start to put things away - who knows why? It would take me days to put everything away. Now I do the 'one touch' thing - I grab 'like' things from my case and take them directly to where they need to be. Unpacking is way faster. Feels great!

4. What's incomplete? This might well be a different list from one you would have made before you left - remember, you're seeing your environment through new eyes. On my latest trip, having made prosperity shifts, it didn't surprise me to come up with a list of about 10 money incompletions on returning home. Took me about 2 hours to address the lot.

5. What needs cleaning up? Autumn leaves, the last of your summer flowers, inside plants given some attention? It's good to put energy into your home - it's a sort of nesting, a transition between the old and new.

6. Take time to go through your notes, read any materials you were given at your event and create a one page list of actions you commit to implementing, based on specific strategies or awarenesses you gained. Find a home for materials you returned with.

7. Create an environment that inspires you, reminds you of the shifts you've made and anchors these changes in your body. This is the enhancement part of Feng Shui and needs to come after the clearing away of what is no longer a good fit. I've just returned from a retreat and a marketing event. I hung the vision board I made at the retreat in my bedroom. I hung the marketing strategies poster on my wall right in front of my computer so I see it all the time.

8. Enhance the Knowledge & Self-Cultivation area of the Bagua in your office, bedroom and home: this is the area specifically related to learning, personal growth and your inner self. The most powerful enhancements are always ones personal to you - a great place to put your vision board. That's where mine is: in the K&SC area of my bedroom. Other things you can use in this area: books/DVDs/CDs related to your inner growth or what you're learning, anything that reminds you of inner wisdom or contemplation, quotes and inspirational sayings, and pictures of mountains. You can also enhance other specific areas - for example my marketing strategies poster I returned with is now in the Wealth & Prosperity area of my office!

For more information on the Bagua and where the different Guas are, see: Bagua Map

If your physical environment doesn't change you'll be pulled back into who you used to be because that's the energy you're most familiar with. It's a big thing to have travelled to a workshop, spent a few days soaking up a new way of being, hanging out with others who are on a similar path. It's a huge commitment to yourself and who you're being in the world.

You may not have even travelled to a workshop - you have the potential to make shifts within yourself at any time and the same principles apply - you can raise the energy in your home to support a change you wish to make, or you can raise the energy in your home to be a closer match with the person you now are and where you're going!

What a waste for it to be but a three-day wonder as you slip back into the person you used to be - wonderful as that person was!

Clear out what is no longer a good fit for you, and surround yourself with items that reflect where you're going. That's how to have your environment support you rather than working against you - and all it takes is intention and consciousness.

Simple, yet complicated things in life

This lovely quilt is called 'Civil War' and is made from reproduction fabrics similar to the color and patterns of those produced during the mid-1800s.   It's maker is a sweet woman named Kay who has made it to grace her warm and welcoming quilt retreat.   Go to http://www.emiliesquilthaus.com  to see what a quilting get-away in the Texas Hill Country looks like.   It is located in Stonewall TX, near where President Lyndon Johnson was born.

Upon first glance, this quilt seems quite simple to make - it is just a series of straight blocks sewn one after the other with no curves, no points and no need to match seams.   However, Kay told me how difficult it was to keep 'straight line straight' throughout the process.   In fact, as the quilt grew, it seemed to get more and more out of shape.  And as we quilted it, with our APQS Longarm machine, we had to work hard to keep it all in line.   In the end, it came out quite well and will be well loved by the guests at Emilie's Haus.

I think this is metaphor of many of life's challenges.   We work hard to keep things simple and our actions on the 'straight and narrow'.  Yet, we stray;  our perfect children, as they develop into their own beings, change and stray in ways that may frustrate us.   However, in the end, like this quilt, we all turn out OK and we continue to be well-loved by those who care the most.

Remember this as you struggle - be it with a quilting project, your family or your work - be prepared for things to stray away from your perfect vision but also know that you will need to accommodate those changes and continue to love it in the end.

The Beginnings of Spring in NYC

    I spent last weekend in New York City, just as the spring rains came and allowed some die-hard yellow daffodils to burst forth, even against a fence.    These flowers remind me of my maternal grandmother who loved them since they always marked her early spring birthday.    Another favorite spring flower of mine is the yellow forsythia.   This one always adds wonderful rays of color near the highways of New York City and will forever signify the birthday of my far-away sister in New York. Last week, I wrote about the bluebonnets of Texas, and my hunt to find swathes of them outside Austin, TX.     

Thinking of the yellows of my home town and the blues of my current home, made me think of the traditional French Provincial colors.   Which made me recall with great joy the two most recent trips I took to Paris, with my close girlfriend from college and my husband and son, celebrating my spouses birthday. Its funny how the mind 'hyperlinks' from item, to memory, to new idea.     

What does all that have to do with quilting? Everything, since when we take in a new customer top to be quilted, we first look at the colors and patterns but we then immediately begin wanting to know who the quilt is for, what occasion it might be celebrating,  and how it should be best brought even further to life.     One thought or color will lead to another story or idea, resulting in a wonderful collaboration between the quilt maker and us, the quilters.

Do you have a favorite color or place that when seen or recalled, makes you think of story after story after another story?

APQS Longarm Millennium Re-Install

What a great day!    We had the real pleasure of working with one of our wonderful clients today, re-installing her APQS Millennium longarm machine.   The pleasure came from both the feeling of accomplishment and empowerment in doing something so mechanical as well as the pure joy of working in a space that is almost perfectly suited for quilting.

Take a look at the finished product in Liz's quilting space.  She originally had us install the Millennium in a great outbuilding on her land overlooking Lake Belton, but it didn't work out.   So we moved it today to a room off her kitchen, with wonderful windows all around two sides.   Liz and her cousin Jan are now all set up to spend hours and hours of fun, quilting their hearts away.

The only sad thing about the move is that Liz will no longer be able to look over this beautiful lake scene while quilting - but she sees it all day long from her intimate deck on the upper floors of her house. Jealous?  I know I am!   

If you would like to know more about the line of APQS Longarm machines, please contact us. We sell them, install them, service them, teach classes about them and now even re-install them.

Welcome to the Over The Top Quilting Studio blog

Welcome to our first blog! Our goal is to be able to reach out to our quilting friends by creating a community of friends interested in quilts and the stories of the quilts.

We hope to keep you coming back as we share the stories behind every quilt we have the joy and privilege of working on.