The Busy Days of Summer

The ever evolving journey to find better work/life balance

It has been over two months since my last Substack post, a longer gap than I ever intended to take, but the summer was busy both in the shop and in life, so writing took a back seat. It is funny for me to think back to the summers when my girls were younger and I was a full time stay at home mom, when I would crave summer camp weeks just to get a few precious hours to myself. Now that I have one in college and the other in high school, I find myself treasuring every single moment they are willing and able to spend with me. The summers together are flying by too quickly and I know the days when they will go off on their own adventures during the summers are soon approaching. So, I opted to prioritize our time together as a family this summer.

We traveled and hiked and explored seashell covered beaches in Acadia. We wandered the woods among Thomas Dambo’s incredible troll sculptures. We spent a magical evening in the woods soaking in Paperhand Puppet Theater’s summer show. We did goat yoga and escape rooms and learned how to make bagels together.

We moved our eldest back to college towards the end of August. She moved into a dorm with a bigger bed this year, so my husband and I spent many summer evenings together working on a new quilt for her room. He helped me with her first college quilt last year and found that he really enjoyed the precision of piecing a quilt together. So this year, I mostly just did the cutting and hand binding while he took care of piecing all the blocks. We both infused the quilt with our love and hope that it keeps her cozy and warm while she’s away at school.

The gift (and maybe sometimes the curse…) of being a craft shop owner is that I am constantly surrounded by project inspiration, which is wonderful and also makes it difficult to focus on just one project at a time. I discovered this summer that removing the pressure to post my work on social media all the time removed a lot of the blocks to my creative energy that I had been feeling for a very long time. I spent the summer working on a variety of projects and instead of constantly trying to figure out the best angle to photograph or tutorial to film, I simply enjoyed the process.

I caught the English Paper Piecing (EPP) bug at the h+h Americas trade show back in May. I picked up a Ruby Star Society mini charm pack, a pack of paper hexies, a glue pen, a needle and thread and got to work. (My favorite supplies are linked above in case you are looking for suggestions.) I do not have a plan for what all of these hexies will one day become, I simply enjoy the process of glue basting and stitching while enjoying episodes of our favorite shows in the evenings.

The Buzzy Bees pattern from Paper Pieces caught my attention, and I started working on building the little bees for this adorable pattern. I found these shapes to be a little bit more finicky than the hexagons, and I didn’t like how the thread I used looked against the black stripes. So, I am thinking I will do a bit of seam ripping some evening this fall and start over with a different thread to see if I can get the stitches to blend a little better.

From EPP bees to itty bitty embroidered bees, the Kiriki Press Honey Bear kit filled the hours when I was in more of an embroidery mood. These kits sold out in minutes in the shop earlier this summer with good reason. They are some of the most thoughtfully curated wool felt embroidery kits I’ve ever seen. I really appreciated how the felt pieces were already pre-cut and stitch lines were screen printed onto the felt, so I didn’t have to spend any time doing prep work and I could just jump right into stitching. The Blanket stitch is probably my least favorite embroidery stitch ever, so it is a bit unfortunate that the reverse blanket stitch features prominently in this HoneyBear design. But, it is good to push outside of my stitching comfort zone every once in awhile, and I am slowly getting more and more comfortable with this fiddly stitch. (FYI, last I heard the next release of these kits will happen in November-ish)

Sashiko is my favorite on-the-go stitching project. Since you only need a needle, thread, thimble and fabric, it is really easy to pop it in your carry-on and stitch just about anywhere. While I am normally a stickler for using Sashiko thread for Sashiko samplers, I have been staring at this wheel of Trailhead Co’s Tencel Thread for ages and I was curious what it would be like to use it for Sashiko.

It definitely stitches differently than traditional Sashiko thread, which is typically not mercerized and has a very matte look to it. The matte finish of Sashiko thread helps “grip” the fabric as you are pulling your thread through your stitches, which can help with regulating stitch tension and getting your stitches to lay flat. Tencel thread has a silk-like vibrant sheen and is much more “slippery”. It took a minute to adjust my stitch tension, but otherwise it has been a dream to stitch with. The tencel thread glides through the fabric with ease and minimal resistance, and the colors are truly spectacular. The richness and vibrancy of the colors can’t be beat. I stitched each section with two different shades of the same color and I love how it turned out. I’ve really enjoyed working on this one this summer and look forward to hanging it up in the Studio very soon.

Under the guise of “research for the shop” since I am thinking of adding Olive Grace patterns, I started one of Kori Turner-Goodhart’s mini-quilt kits that so beautifully combines embroidery and quilting techniques. I have been a collector of quotes since I was a kid, so I was really drawn to the words in this sampler. It is my goal to get this one stitched and finished in time to hang up in my booth at QuiltCon next February. Wish me luck!

It was a very busy summer in the shop as well. Like so many small business owners around the country, my summer was dominated by trying to figure out a way forward with all of the obstacles created by the ever changing tariff policies. I tried my best to stock up on the items that I noticed were becoming harder to find (like everything made by Bohin to my great sadness) and spent many hours researching alternatives to items I could no longer order with mixed success.

The elimination of the $800 de minimus limit was a big blow to small businesses that depended on that exemption limit to be able to offer a wide array of global products at reasonable prices. It caused a lot of chaos around the world as the burden to collect tariffs was placed on the international shippers since USPS did not have the systems in place to collect the tariffs here. Many countries stopped shipping to the US entirely in late August and many small businesses around the world made the tough decision to no longer work with US companies. It was (and continues to be in a lot of ways) a very stressful time to be a small business owner.

The extra stress made me especially grateful that I have stitching in my life as a way of working through the worries and anxieties. I truly do feel better on the days when I can fit in even just a few minutes of stitching here and there. With all of that, the summer flew by and we now somehow find ourselves almost at the end of September! I am starting to gear up for the holiday season and looking forward to welcoming a new shop assistant soon that will *hopefully* free up some more time to return to writing more frequently (fingers crossed).