This has been a weird sort of week. First, we have a houseguest; a female friend of my son visiting from Finland. Then, my husband who usually works a 2-day-on/2-day-off shift schedule is in a class for two weeks. That means instead of coming home after his 48-hour shift, he’s in class and only gets to come home a couple of nights each week. It’s really messing with my calm, especially since he’s the more social of the two of us. But, our houseguest is very shy, and I think she’s afraid of my husband, so I guess it’s better that it’s just me here trying to make sure she has a good time.


Strangely, other than spending a bit more time each day keeping the house tidy, I have found myself getting a lot more done than I usually do! I’ve met all my deadlines for the month, when I usually am rushing to get done. I’ve been working on quilting, embroidery and my writing as the mood hits. It’s a wonderful feeling!


With all this energy for work, I’ve managed to get quite a few machine embroidery designs completed. I love digitizing, but it can be very time consuming. This week, the work has flowed so easily. Maybe I should have a houseguest more often! My husband already works 72 hours a week, so I don’t think I can ask him to work even more so I can work on my embroidery passion.


Because my creativity has come so easily this week, I’ve even tried a few new techniques and have ordered some new embroidery supplies as well. I’m looking forward to trying out my new embroidery designs on the Mulberry Paper that’s coming. Embroidered holiday cards have always been a favorite of mine, but I never had time to do them by hand. Thank goodness for machine embroidery!


Once my son and his guest go out for the day, and leave the internet to my sole use, I’ll upload a new set of designs to the embroidery design gallery that I belong to. While I’m there, I’ll also look over all the great designs by the other digitizers. If I’m lucky, I’ll find a couple of awesome free embroidery downloads or a couple of new embroidery patterns. Although I’m a digitizer, I still stitch lots of embroidery designs by other designers. We all have such different talents and styles.


Now that the day is coming to a close, I need to rush a bit to complete the embroidery projects that I set for the week. Tomorrow, I’ll be getting my hair done (a rarity) and then getting the house in order and making lasagna. My husband will be home tomorrow night and Saturday, and I want it to be as pleasant as possible for him. The embroidery can be put on hold for him.


As much as I love machine embroidery, I love my husband more. Actually, without his support I wouldn’t even be involved in the art of machine embroidery or the creative endeavor of digitizing embroidery designs.


Maybe his favorite cherry pie after dinner would be a good way to tell him how much I appreciate him. I wonder if my Finish guest will like it.

This time of year, moms are thinking about the new school year. Now that my son is grown and college is his responsibility, I’m free to think and worry about and plan other things. Some years, it’s all about the upcoming holidays, décor and gifts. Other times, like this year, it’s all about calendars, organization and making my house look like the home I want it to be. Of course, my stitching comes into play in a lot of this, whether it’s making quilted tote bags or tablecloths embellished with machine embroidery.

My husband is in a career that has a messed up schedule. Most of them work 48 hours on and 48 hours off, while others work weekdays, and some work weekdays, but also put in a 24-hour shift sometime during that week. It’s confusing for them, and nearly impossible for us wives to figure out, especially when they get a 4-day break once a month and an 8-day break once per quarter. How do we plan our days, parties, and more? When do I have a full day to devote to playing with my machine embroidery designs?

Three years ago, I took over making the pocket schedules and wall calendars for everyone. These calendars, through an intricate system of color coding denote days on shift, days off, and whether those days off are the normal 48 hours or the more anticipated 4- and 8-day breaks. Last year, I took it a step further and created a planner for each of the wives. These include extra calendars, like showing who is off at the same time. It also includes our contact information, conversion charts and lots of local information for getting around and enjoying our brief stay in Greece.

As well as enjoying what I can do in the realm of machine embroidery, I love using my computer for paper crafting in an arty way and in putting together things like those planners. Most of the wives make some sort of ornament or small gift to give at Christmas, so while I created the planners, my embroidery machine was right beside me, stitching out lovely free-standing lace ornaments. My husband and son got involved by adding hot-fix crystals to the rinsed and dried ornaments and also added pretty ribbon as a hanger. Every year, we also create a CD of holiday music. These all packaged together quite well, and we all had a blast doing it.

This year, I need to update the planners and create additional ones for the newcomers. I need to collect phone numbers and email addresses, find out kids’ names and everyone’s birthdays! I used to be an office manager, so this type of thing lets me enjoy the work I did for so long.

However, this year, thoughts of the planners have me thinking of my home. Doing animal fostering as I do, the house gets to be a real jumble. Ordinary, every-day cleaning just doesn’t keep it organized. Two weeks ago, it got a thorough going-over because my son had a house guest. Since this is the first girl he’s brought home, I wanted everything to be perfect. Unfortunately, I forgot about making the new couch pillows with that great free embroidery design I found. Instead, I concentrated on making our American-Clutter house look modern and European. I succeeded to a degree, but then had nothing on hand to show our guest when she asked what I do. This got me thinking about what I really want my home to reflect.

I only began my machine embroidery passion after many, many years of sewing and quilting. Once I understood just how versatile embroidery designs could be, I decided to try my hand at digitizing my own. My first attempts were awful, but I enjoyed the process so much that I just kept trying. I soon realized that I had discovered a passion that I could actually embrace as my new full-time job, leaving behind the dry and boring career of accounting forever. This was something I had been looking to find for a long time, so you can imagine my excitement!

Of course, providing top quality machine embroidery designs takes more than just deciding to do so! It took more than a year to find my style and test my own designs until they were all that I hoped they would be. Placing my first designs for sale was both exciting and terrifying! What if I had failed? Dreams are hard to put aside, so I just kept moving forward. I’m so glad that I did.

Every digitizer of embroidery designs has their own style, own goals, and own ideas on what they want to provide for their customers. Because I love to share and teach, I like to provide free embroidery designs as often as possible. This allows embroiderers to test my designs to make sure they like them, and also allows me to help out those whose budgets don’t allow for a lot of different embroidery patterns.

My style keeps evolving, which is both wonderful and not. Each new style shift means many more hours of practice and test stitching, which takes away from my need to create. But, trying out new ideas also keeps my creativity going strong. It is obvious that I will never grow bored because there are so many different types of embroidery designs and styles to try out!

My goals are twofold. For those who stitch my designs, I want them to enjoy every step of the process and never have any issues with the embroidery that they create. I know that I will not always succeed with this goal, but I always try! For myself, I simply want to never have to go back to the staid, uncreative job of number-crunching. Creating machine embroidery designs will never make me monetarily successful, but my life is so much richer for the choice I made to follow my dream.

I sometimes wonder what the future may hold for me. Will I create my own line of embroidery supplies? Will I discover a machine embroidery thread that never breaks? Will I discover a way to make my embroidery machine also sweep the floor and fold the laundry? Hey, it’s my fantasy! Dreaming big just means that our smallest dreams will come true. We may have to work hard for the biggest dreams, but I believe the journey is worth it whether the dream is realized or not.

Take a moment each day to work towards your dream. Everyone should be as content as I am today.