On your Mark, Get Set, Go!

I started. A bit late this year.

I had told myself I wouldn’t do it the same way as last year.

Sigh.

But I did start on October 4 by sandwiching and quilting two charity quilts. I didn’t finish them, as in binding and washing, but that will come.

But starting is important.

We are also working on two other things in the house - first of all, there’s a room in the basement that my husband is tearing out the flooring of and part of the drywall and going to redo it as we got water in it a while ago. He’s bringing the “stuff” that was in that room upstairs for me to deal with a bit at a time. It had become a repository of all things “I don’t know what to do with” including some fabric and quilting related things. Sadly, a good bit of that is going in the garbage as it smells moldy. The good thing is, most of what I am throwing away I didn’t really want very much - and that’s why it was down there. So, I guess it is enforced “cleaning up”.

This is what we shared the table with at breakfast today. My husband is most patient. (The table is 8’ long and I flipped part back so we had about 3’ to eat.) I will need to get more batting today. You can see I’ve covered the bench on this side —and the other—with a jersey fitted sheet (it had a hole in it) to save the bench from stickiness since I do use spray basting.

You can also see the puzzles on the chair on the right - my husband brought those up for me to deal with. I will have to decide which to keep, which are good enough to give away and which need to be tossed. Decision fatigue is real, however, and I just put them over on the side to deal with when I was fresher and ready to make a bunch of decisions!

I’ve also been going through my daughter’s bedroom making it walkable again. I have now sorted out about 3 laundry type tubs of scraps I need to go back through and sort - or trim down. That is fine - as that is really all I have - the rest of my scraps are trimmed. Obviously I will be creating a lot in the next few weeks, however.

And, I’ve been wanting to trim down more into two sizes of bricks so I can make the Mosaic in the next two sizes UP - but I’d run out of scraps. I have quite a few trimmed, but not enough yet.

Of course, I realize I can actually trim down yardage simply by taking it off my shelves of fabric, but I was kind of trying to keep them to using up scraps.

Anyway, here is part of my “to finish” pile of charity tops - I’ve sorted some of them into what color backings I want to use with them. So far I’ve decided not to buy any more backing fabric until I actually NEED it - maybe after I sandwich half of the tops I have. We’ll see. Maybe I don’t need to buy any at all yet.

I started with this top. I just loved it - and it was donated by a generous person from the USA! I so appreciate it - it will be a hit, for sure!

And today I’m working on sandwiching two more and then I’ll go quilt them. Eventually I need to start sandwiching 3 or 4 a day - but first I have to go buy more batting. The wholesale place I buy the batting is only about half mile away so it’s not a problem to go get more.

So, you can see what I’ll be doing - among other things. Quilting these smallish tops doesn’t normally take too much time individually. It’s when you have a lot that it adds up, naturally. But it’s fine. I really do enjoy seeing all the finished beauties!

My husband will be teaching (Major Prophets in the Old Testament - in case you are curious) for these two weeks via ZOOM to a group of students in the Ukraine, but he assured me that I can sew - it doesn’t bother him even though his office is next to my sewing room. He can shut the door and it’s fine. I was relieved, actually, as I did worry about it a bit.

And there you are!

This is what I’ve got on my plate today and yesterday and tomorrow. I’m actually writing this blog post this morning (Tuesday)- something I NEVER do - but as I sat down to write last night we had a cracker boomer of a storm and we lost electricity - about 8 pm. So, since we were tired, as it had been an early morning (Ukraine time is an hour ahead of us so we have to get going early for my husband’s teaching) - we went to bed.

Have a great day wherever you are reading this! I do so appreciate you all!

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