Yesterday (when you read this, it will be day before yesterday), I did a lot for Mike’s last load as planned, to Ukraine, which he hopes to take next week.

I spent all morning and part of the afternoon shopping for things that I neither ordered from the wholesale place (food) nor on line and had it delivered. I’ve been having things delivered daily for the last few days. I know that the couriers are really amazed at how much they’ve delivered to us this calendar year. :) (I know because the ladies at the findings wholesale place nearby told me the courier told them he was going to us a lot. She told him we have a charitable organization.)

Anyway, I had gotten all of Fran’s tops out of the boxes the other day but hadn’t done anything more with them. I usually plan on adding borders to all of them - but have to do the cutting first.

When I get them from Fran, the large ones are about 70”x80” without borders but after I add an inner 2.5” cut border and an outer 6.5” cut border, the final quilts are 86”x96” which is really a great size for a double or queen. People love them. Let me show you. This is one I finished in late 2021. The first photo is how I get them from Fran. The second photo is how they look after I add borders. (It goes without saying WITHOUT the quilting. :))

So yesterday I went down to my table and just started cutting after 6 pm. I had finished cutting borders for all 40+ tops of the larger ones shortly after 9 pm. I was so tired of cutting - but wanted to get them all done.

I was using a lot of the new solids that I just bought from a Polish fabric supplier, Kejt, which I showed you the other day. Sadly I didn’t take pics as I worked but here are the tops from Fran with the newly cut borders wrapped up inside each top. There 6 rather large bags of tops here.

I still have the small ones to do and today - I had hoped to do the same thing - cut the borders for all of Fran’s centers - I just kept doing other things and didn’t get to them. I went to the store again this morning (for us and for a project we’re doing for Ukrainians). Then while I had put chili the crock pot right after breakfast, my husband had indicated that he would love to have Cornbread Pot Pie Chili - so I decided today was the day to try that.

After lunch/dinner I decided to go ahead and pack up some more bundles. What’s happening is that I’m trying to use up all the leftover odds and ends of things I have from earlier in the year. I’ve had some boxes of things sitting around - relating to quilts.

I had uncovered 11 of these really sweet bags - 5 hot pink, some orange, grey and navy for a total of 11 bags. I wanted to use them up - which meant I needed to use my charity quilts and get the blankets, pillows and towels that I like to use in these bags. I ran out of so called bottom sheets and decided to just not worry about them - I used up the 2 bottom sheets I had and then just left them out of the rest of the bags.

When making these sets back in March, I was trying to figure out how to close them up - so I made these little straps with a D ring and some strapping. I had quite a few so I put a yellow one and a blue on on each quilt roll.

So I decided to go ahead and use up the rest of my 9 vinyl packs I had on hand, and then use up all my bags that had been sitting around in a box from the earliest days of my Ukraine efforts. In order to fill up those vinyl bags and the little vinyl bags, I used charity quilts that I just showed plus some that were sitting in the living room from several weeks ago now.

It actually takes a bit of work to roll up these quilt rolls. If you’ve ever gone camping and rolled up a pillow into a sleeping bag - well that is the idea I used here. I’ve not gone camping like this for years now - but this is how we rolled up our sleeping bags.

Here’s the result of all of that work. My charity quilt pile that has been photographed is now rather small. (But we have cheaper electricity on the weekends so I’m planning on running our washing machine all day Saturday and as much on Sunday as I can to get these washed.) From now on, though they will probably be taken to the church building to meet the needs of local people - either Polish or Ukrainian - doesn’t matter.

I wanted these things to go on the trailer to Ukraine for the year - as I’m really trying to clear out my house from all of these things.

I want to have room our Christmas tree. No, we’ve not put it up yet. Here in Poland, it is common to put your tree up from about the 15th to the 24th and then leave it up long into January or even the first part of February. It normally goes right where all those charity quilts are sitting in the above picture.

I still had hopes to get back to working on that cutting of the borders for the small tops. I have over 40 to cut for - maybe closer to 50.

But… I’m out of steam and calling it a day. They can wait for another day. I decided to come up to my computer, put on the World Cup game between Croatia and Brazil (quarterfinals) and write this while I sit down.

Note - as to my watching the World Cup. I’m not particularly a soccer/football fan. BUT, I do tend to be an Event watcher - so during the Olympics, I’ll watch sports I’d never normally care about. The same with the World Cup. I mean, I NEVER normally watch any of those sports like swimming, diving, gymnastics, etc. During the Olympics, if I can manage some moments and access, I will at least give them a look. Last time I had no way to watch them as they made it impossible to get access since we don’t have regular tv, so I didn’t. Here in Poland we can all watch the World Cup games for free - no special fees or registration or payments required. I can even listen in English which is quite a luxury. It’s a free website for us - or anyone actually. It’s www.sport.tvp.pl - if you are interested. Just use a VPN and put your country on Poland and you can too, should you so desire.

With teams from quite a few places in the world coming together - and Poland actually making it past the first round (and the USA too), it was a bit more interesting at first. However, now I’m just cheering for the underdogs.

Anyway…

So, I’m bringing these bags of tops that I have cut the borders for up to my sewing room - I’ve told myself to remember to bring up a bag every time I come upstairs. I can work on these tops when I want to sew something but don’t want to really “think”. All of us have those days when we want to sew - sometimes we just make 4 patches or sew strips together or make scrappy blocks. I hope to add these borders to those tops. In the past years I’ve done this during the summer when it was very hot and I couldn’t stand to quilt. However, this past summer I really didn’t come up to room much as we were knee deep in packing up quilts.

I think I’m still in recovery from yesterday with that cutting in the evening. And those stores - today they were so crowded today! And it’s only December 9 - not the 20th! I can’t even imagine how bad it is going to be when it gets closer to Christmas. Otherwise, I can’t think why I should be so tired just with shopping, cooking and packing up some quilts….maybe it’s my age!

That’s it for today.

Thanks for coming along with me! Have a great day wherever you are reading this!

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