Sounds like the title for a new horror film, right? Or perhaps a made-for-TV-movie featured on a certain science fiction TV channel known for really bad plot lines, less than stellar acting, and suspicious special effects? Unfortunately this tale is true. Fortunately is has a happy ending. Hopefully. I do not know if the monster I thought I killed will pop out of the ground in the last shot of the film…

I was accepted to my first juried show and needed to ship my art quilt across the country to the gallery in Poughkeepsie NY. Very nervous about how to ship an art quilt across the country, I consulted with seasoned quilt artists who had participated in many shows. They provided wonderful advice on how to set up an account with a shipping company, how to package and protect my art quilt, and what steps to take to make everything go smoothly.

I set up an account on line with a national shipping company (name removed to protect the innocent…me) and then went in person to the local office of the shipping company a week prior to needing to have it shipped to investigate all shipping procedures and select an appropriate shipping container, which turned out to be a tube.

Then I proceeded to obsessively package up my art quilt (I figured as long as I did that right all would go well):

I created a special fabric label for the quilt with my address and phone number (should it mysteriously fall out of the package during shipping)
I lovingly wrapped it in acid free tissue paper (like one would use to protect a wedding gown)
I inserted into a plastic bag and then double bagged it to combat unexpected olive oil spills (you never know – in the container next to your delicate piece of art is a giant box from Olive Oil R’ Us that accidentally breaks and leaks everywhere in the delivery truck!)
I then most obsessively labeled each end of the tube – one side for “paperwork” and the other “art” (my paperwork to accompany the piece was also meticulously organized).

So with my package obsessively prepared (it may have taken me more time to prepare it for shipping then I spent originally creating the piece), I returned to the national shipping company local office to mail it. The clerk told me to just sign into my account online there and complete my paperwork and bring it up to the desk.

So I got that all done and dropped it off with the clerk who I saw scan it in. The clerk asked if I wanted evidence that it had been scanned in, but the info would all be on my national shipping company account with the tracking number, so I declined getting receipt – I would just check it online later. I realized I never saw what the shipping cost when I set it up online. I asked what the cost of the shipping was and the clerk said to check online with my account with my online receipt for the shipping and the tracking number.

Naturally I forget to do that until after 9:00 pm (when of course my local national shipping office is closed). When I check my account online – THERE WAS NO RECORD OF MY SHIPPING, NO TRACKING NUMBER, NOTHING!!! My shipped art had vanished into the nether regions. Likely to the same place lost socks go – my art quilt doomed to spend eternity with piles of non-matching socks…

I did some quick thinking (which is important in moment of sheer terror) and I check online the credit card I had set up with national shipping account to see a record of the charge – and there were no charges to the credit card account. My panic worsens, as I truly have no way to prove I even shipped the package: no receipt, no tracking number, no credit card charge, etc.

I cannot call the local national shipping office as they are closed, so I call the national 1-800 number and speak to someone who’s is very difficult to understand (after several minutes of automated prompts) but very helpful – he tries to reverse track the package using the shipping address. After several tense minutes on hold, he comes back on the line and informs me that the package is not in the system (gasp) but after a pause he states they have not updated the system and it may not be listed until the morning.

At this point I would rather be chased by some mutant monster from a bad horror movie than facing the realization that my art is lost and there goes my opportunity to be in my first juried show. Finally I realize there is nothing I can do until I talk to the local national shipping office in the am and I reluctantly go to bed.

In morning I talk to the local national shipping office as soon as it opens at 7:30 am. They cannot locate the package info but take my phone number. An hour of sweating later, the clerk calls me and gives me the tracking number – YAY!!! I of course go immediately online to national shipping company package tracking page to check it and voila it is there – now sitting in Troutdale Oregon on its way across the country. However still no record on my national shipping account of this package and no charge to my credit card….

LESSON LEARNED: Never ship anything of value without getting a receipt/tracking number for your shipment. Just like the guileless women in horror films, I was dressed up all fancy and running with my high heels on and never thought to stop and take them off – so I tripped and the monster nearly got me!

EPILOGUE 9/10/14 – No scary monster grabbed my leg in the closing scenes of the shipping horror movie – my package was delivered today to the gallery!

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Properly Hung!

August 25, 2014October 15, 2023 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

I received delightful news the other day from my dear friend in Austria – the quilt I made his son has now been “properly hung”.

The quilt, whimsical house blocks done in a Scandinavian palette (my friend is originally from Denmark), is not just “properly hung” on the wall of his house – it is FUNCTIONALLY HUNG!

There is an electrical panel in the hallway of their house and they creatively hung the quilt with a special frame that both disguises the electrical box and gives easy access! Brilliant, eh?

(It is always so pleasing as a quilter to know that a quilt you make someone is not sitting in a closet somewhere gathering dust.)

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Look Look I am in a Book!

June 23, 2014May 3, 2020 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Check out Sassy’s latest post in her blog Schnauzer Snips!

I received some wonderful news the other day – two of my quilts (sections from “Flying Triangles” and “Color Change”) are going to be in a new art/quilting book: 1000 Quilting Inspirations by Sandra Sider. It will be published by Quarry Books and is due for publication mid Dec 2014 or early January 2015. The book is already listed on the Quarry Books website and you can view it from this link 1000 Quilt Inspirations.

As a member of the Central Oregon branch of SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) I was fortunate enough to be notified that this publication was looking for submissions. I went “submission crazy” and submitted 12 pieces. I am so excited that several of my art quilts Flying Triangles and Color Change are going to be in a national publication. The pieces were personally selected by the book author/editor who holds quite the impressive resume.

I received an e-mail from the publisher notifying me and requesting better photos of the quilts! When I completed my original submissions, they did not want full size quilt photos, they just wanted either small quilts up to 14″x14″ or small sections of quilts for the book. So instead of being able to use the lovely professional photos I have of these quilts, the World’s-Worse-Photographer (me) took photos of sections. Of course they needed me to redo my photos. This time I retook them without my eyes closed! Ha!

I cannot wait until I can have a copy of the book and see my name, quilt and Betty Anne’s name as long arm quilter listed! (Oh and yes I need to start working on some new silk quilts, I have been “milking” the four I made for way too long now!)

Color Change

Flying Triangles

Fabric Scraps Obsession, tierneycreates

A Scrappy Existence

March 3, 2014October 22, 2018 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Okay. I love fabric scraps. I am not sure how or when it started but it has been going on for years. And it has developed into an obsession.

I go to a quilting class or a quilt retreat and I see piles of fabric scraps, many which are going to be thrown away. I have been guilty of staying a little late after a quilting class to “clean up” and grab the fabric scraps left behind – on the class ironing board, on the table, under the table…okay once I reached into the trash during a quilting class (when no one was looking) to rescue a large beautiful discarded scrap!

A local quilt shop sells bags of high quality scraps and I have bought several over the years. There is something exciting about a new bag of scraps – the discovery – opening up the bag and seeing what goodies are inside! When visiting friends in Seattle during an annual quilting trip, we stop by a quilt shop that allows customers to fill up a sandwich bag (yes the small one) with scraps for $3. I see it as the “challenge of the century” each time. I have mastered rolling up scraps tightly and cramming them into the tiny bag. My friends are usually amazed when I empty the bag later and see how many fabric scraps I fit in!

My quilting friends support my fabric scrap obsession. A dear friend and original quilting mentor, Judy, sent me over the holidays a lovely package of scraps from a recent quilt she finished.

Yummy fall color scraps from my friend Judy

I do make quilts with the scraps, though my husband says it will take roughly 25 quilts to use up my scraps.

Today I pondered: “why do I love fabric scraps so much?” The high quality quilting fabric scraps that I am attracted are from quilts others make. I guess that using other quilters’ scraps in a quilt (or just having them in my quilt room!) connects me to other quilters and the quilts they make. Quilts are pretty special thing and I love thinking that my fabric scraps are part of handmade items making someone, somewhere smile.

Textiles & Smiles!

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Resources, Resources, Resources!

December 19, 2013June 3, 2018 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

A coworker recently asked me: “I would like to start a blog about my crafts, how do I do it…where do I start?”

I began with that same question a couple months ago before starting mine. To find the answers, I turned to my local library Deschutes Public Library. Since childhood, I have thought of the library as a magical place filled with ideas, inspirations, and imagination! All for free!!!

So a simple search for “blogging” on my library’s website http://www.deschuteslibrary.org led to my borrowing the following wonderful books from my library:

Houghton, Robin. (2012). Blogging for creatives: how designers, artists, crafters and writers can blog to make contacts and win. Cincinnati, Ohio: How Books.
Frey, Tara. (2009). Blogging for bliss: crafting your own online journal: a guide for crafters, artists & creatives of all kinds. New York: Lark Books.
Gardner, Susannah. (2011). Blogging for Dummies. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley

After looking through these resources, and checking out the various blog sites, I decided to go with WordPress. Then I looked for free WordPress specific resources. I did a search on the iTunes App Store and discovered a free “learning WordPress” app for the iPad. The WordPress site itself offers excellent free tutorials for new users, so I went through most of those. I found WordPress to be fairly user friendly with a short learning curve. Several things were intimidating at first – like which free blog page design to select but WordPress let’s you experiment with many and change your format.

When it came time to start up my Etsy shop (my next step after getting my blog established) I turned to the library again and found excellent resources on starting an online craft business. My favorites were:

Sutton, Derrik. (2011). How to sell your crafts online: a step-by-step guide to successful sales on Etsy and beyond. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.
Gatski, Kate. (2013). Starting an Etsy business for dummies. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley
Turner, Marcia Layton, (2013). The complete idiot’s guide to selling your crafts on Etsy. Indianapolis, IN: Alpha. (This book was such an excellent resource, that I bought the kindle version on Amazon.com so I could always have access to it on my iPad.)

I also wandered the shelves at the library in the craft book section and came upon these wonderful books:

Chapin, Kari. (2010). The handmade marketplace. North Adams, MA: Storey Pub.
Chapin, Kari. (2012). Grow your handmade business: how to envision, develop, and sustain a successful creative business. North Adams, MA: Storey Pub.

I live in a smallish-medium size town and if you live in a larger town/metropolitan area, your library may have even more wonderful resources. All free! You can buy the books you want to keep as ongoing resources later, but you can start your research with no investment, except your time to browse! Enjoy the resources, resources, resources!

Studio, tierneycreates

Thanksgiving Weekend Happenings

December 1, 2013August 23, 2021 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

ETSY SHOP IS FINALLY UP!

I have not posted anything in a while as I have been focused on getting my new Etsy store up. I thought I would never master taking decent digital photographs but I think I figured out some decent lighting for the mini kimonos. I added 24 handmade items to the shop (including 22 mini kimonos!) to get it started, more to come…

http://www.etsy.com/shop/tierneycreates

It it thanks to my wonderful sister that I finally got my Etsy store up – she kept pushing me to follow my dream through achieving special milestones (she “project managed” me!)

NEW QUILT BACK FROM QUILTER

One of my favorite things – to get a quilt back from my long-arm quilter and complete the binding and enjoy the quilt. The name of pattern is “Aussie” and I came across it many years ago from the French quilting magazine Quiltmania. The quilt featured in the magazine was made from Aboriginal prints, but I made mine from African fabrics.

A Crafter's Life, tierneycreates

Up, Down, and Up Again

November 22, 2013November 29, 2015 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Last Friday I got some thrilling news: a local shop enthusiastically agreed to carry my kimonos on commission in their shop. We even talked about them being displayed on a Christmas tree in the shop. I was overwhelmed with excitement and shared this wonderful news with family and friends. I spent the next week after work, some times late into the evening, getting my kimonos ready to deliver to the shop the following Friday (today). In my fervor of excitement, I made a couple new kimonos using beautiful holiday fabrics and a couple kimonos with new Asian fabric I just purchased, to add to those to be displayed at the shop. I was feeling very UP – I was flying with anticipation of my first opportunity to market to the public and sell my kimonos- they would be on display and for sale during the holiday shopping season!

This morning I called the shop to set up a time to deliver them and the shop owner abruptly informed me that it would not work out, the shop would not be able to carry my kimonos. The shop owner’s reasons were not clear and I was not sure what went wrong. CRASH! I was now feeling very DOWN, so much that my eyes filled with tears. I also felt an overwhelming sense of embarrassment from sharing prematurely with friends and family my news of a local shop carrying my kimonos.

Now an hour later, after talking with my husband and then a close friend, I am feeling UP again. Not only did their support help, I realized that whenever you venture out there in life, whenever you take a risk – there is bound to be some disappointment and some “failure”. That is just the way life works. I realized that what I have done this past week is get the kimonos fully ready for sale…and this now means they are ready for listing on Etsy (and getting my Etsy shop up and running!). I bear no ill will towards the shop owner and respect that it just did not work for them. I actually thank them for giving me an impetus to get the kimonos sale ready and tagged!

I love quotes, and here is a quote that keeps inspiring me:

“You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt

Quality of Life, tierneycreates

Holding On and Letting Go

November 13, 2013June 3, 2018 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Saturday 11/9/13 I roused myself out of bed at 5:30 am, changed into my “good pajamas” and headed with friends to the the Stitchin’ Post quilt shop’s annual PJ sale. If you get there by some crazy hour, dressed in your pajamas (and it is crazy cold outside), you get a crazy discount on nearly everything in the store. Naturally this is something for my hard-core-quilting-friends not to miss.

After wandering around a packed quilt shop in the wee hours of the morning, with a sea of women (and an occasional son or husband that tagged along), with bolts of fabric stacked in your arms, it is time to go to breakfast. That is when the real fun begins – flocks of quilters in their pajamas wander the streets of Sisters, Oregon looking for the best place for post-shopping-frenzy breakfast.

There is something so pleasurable about sitting around in a local diner, having breakfast with your friends, in your PJs …with the occasional stare from an out-of-towner who is likely thinking “wow they are really casual in Central Oregon, they don’t even bother to get dressed to go out!”

While at the annual Pajama sale, I wandered over to the gift shop connected to the Stitchin’ Post – Twigs. Nested among artsy kitchen and home decor items, I found a small plaque that really spoke to me. I contained a quote by the 13th century Persian poet, Rumi:

“Life is a balance of holding and letting go”.

This quote was very timely to me as I am struggling with creating pieces for my Etsy store that I end up wanting to keep for own home! I am fairly sure that the poet Rumi meant something much deeper than struggling to let go of your hand made items, but this quote is helping me work through the process of let go to achieve my dream of selling to the public…maybe.

I just finished my first Modern Quilt Table Runner for my upcoming Etsy store and I wanted to keep it! The idea of doing table runners for my store came from my friend Marla Jo. I was struggling with the idea of making quilts to sell as they take a tremendous amount of work and you never know how they will sell online. Instead I can make modern and unique art quilt table runners that can be used as either table runners or hung as small narrow art quilts in someone’s home.

Not sure if I am going to sell the first “prototype” Modern Quilt Table Runner or only future iterations (still working through the “letting go” part). Below are a couple photos of it. It is my original design using a single piece of beautiful cream fabric with color variations from light to dark and inserting bands of pieced fabrics. I used an original quilting design.

Let me end this post with a couple more Rumi quotes – they are always food for thought whether you apply them to quilting or to life in general:

“You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?” ― Rumi

“When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.” – Rumi

“I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.” – Rumi

“Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love.” – Rumi

“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.” – Rumi

A Crafter's Life, tierneycreates

Love wears it out…

November 7, 2013February 13, 2016 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

**Check out the Schnauzer Snips and Textile Adventures pages for new posts: Sassy the Miniature Schnauzer’s musing on the art of happy and my preparation for my first handmade offering on Etsy.**

How do you know a quilt has been loved?

It is worn, frayed, maybe even threadbare. In my early days of quilting this would make me cringe – I put all that work into a quilt and now it is all worn out? Now the thought of one my quilts being so loved (just think of that glorious book The Velveteen Rabbit) brings a huge smile to my face.

While talking to my sister the other day (she has many quilts from me) she mentioned that most of the quilts I have made her are very worn out, some are just “hanging on by thread” about to fall apart. I take quilt construction seriously and for a second I thought “wow shoddy workmanship on my part” and “why did they not take better care of the quilts”? I came to my senses several seconds later and realized: Wow! Those quilts have been truly loved – I am so lucky and so honored!

I think of what my first quilting mentor and dear friend, Judy D said “if a quilt is falling apart, all worn out, then it has been truly loved…I never mind repairing a quilt that has been loved”.

Excerpt from The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

“Real isn’t how you are made, it’s a thing that happens to you… When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

“Sometimes…When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up..or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once..You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

Thank you to all the people I have made quilts for over the years, who have truly loved them, and made them REAL.

my old beloved bear Felix and his “doll quilt”.

tierneycreates

Sewing Down Binding: the final frontier to completion

October 31, 2013August 23, 2021 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

As a quilter, one of my favorite things is to get a quilt back from the long arm quilter, put on the binding and then sew it down to complete the quilt. I have quilting friends who hate the binding part, even some with a backlog of finished quilts only awaiting binding. I have included a photo of the recent quilt I got back from the long arm quilter. It is such a treat to watch a movie or TV show and sew down my binding while snuggling under my new quilt. I would love to hear what other quilters think about sewing down binding….

I received a gift from someone’s estate of new and antique Dutch and Japanese blue and white textiles and used those fabrics to create this quilt. After it was quilted and the binding attached, I laundered it to give it more texture.

Pattern: “Joining Together Quilt” from the book Quilt Love by Cassandra Ellis, Taunton Press 2012

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Welcome to tierneycreates!

October 27, 2013September 8, 2023 tierneycreates: a fusion of textiles and smiles

Thank you for visiting and I look forward to your comments and thoughts on my posts.

My blog focuses on the many aspects of a “Crafter’s Life” and discusses topics such as sources of creative inspiration, my artistic journey, what’s on my design wall, quality of life, quilting retreats, artistic growth, outside adventures, books that inspire me and all things related to handmade textile crafts!

The My Story section contains the The “Tierney” page sharing my story; and a tour of my studio in the tierneycreates Studio Tour page. The Textile Adventures section has links to my Exhibits and Shows, Art for Sale, and Gallery of my work.