Hello everyone… Well, it’s been quite a while since my last blog post — six months actually.

I stopped blogging when I left to go to China, Tibet and Hong Kong back in September 2012. I had every intention of blogging when I came home, because I was filled with lots of inspiration–however I just never got around to it.

We had a wonderful tour guide in China named “Mr. Lee”. Ironically most of our guides had astoundingly English sounding names. Of course, I’m sure they have beautiful Chinese names. They probably just got tired of correcting mispronouncing tourists.

One of the things that really stood out for me during our trip was how the Chinese government blocks a lot of the Internet from the citizens. I quickly discovered there was no Facebook, no WordPress–and these are tools that I use on a pretty much daily basis in my creative life.

Since I’ve been home, I’ve actually done quite a bit of quilting for customers. Since the first of the year, I kept a few slots for myself and I’m proud to say that I have quilted four of my own quilts since then. Three of them are bound and finished. The fourth one is just waiting for me to decide if I’m going to do straight edges or a scalloped or wavy edge. Once I decide, I can go ahead and trim the quilt, put the binding on it and it will be done. It’s actually destined to be my next show or museum quilt.

I’ve finished the scrappy trip around the world quilt which I’ve blogged about before. It’s a glorious riot of color, and it made a good dent in my scrap bins. I will get a picture posted one of these days on my blog so that you can see it. I’ve also made another quilt top out of my scraps, using the technique of the “Jelly Roll Race” which you can find by searching on the Internet. It was a really fun project.

Today, my next quilting customer stopped by to drop off her quilt top, and select backing fabric, threads and quilting design. It really is a luxury when I can meet with a customer face-to-face in my studio because then I have access to my quilts as samples to show threads and colors, and also to show designs stored on my computer from my library of possible designs.

Now that those choices have all been made by the customer, I am ready to get started and get that quilt done.

I hope to finish it before I leave on my next adventure. I won’t tell you where yet… but I do hope to return very inspired… and ready to blog!

Happy Quilting,
Fellow Quilter,
Brian Clements