Company is coming! Get busy!

Yes, we are having a fellow missionary from Ukraine and now the country of Georgia land early on Friday morning where he will stay until he and my husband head to Ukraine on Monday morning. Mike isn’t planning on doing much more than crossing the border to take Bruce over there. Bruce wants to be in Ukraine for a graduation ceremony of some of his Bible students.

Mike said he would just come on back to Poland and won’t go all the way to the final destination. Someone else will come and meet him in Ukraine. The slow part is the border crossing.

I needed to get the guest room ready. I thought I had until about June 5/6 to do that but once we learned that he would be here in May, I had to up my deadline by about 10 days.

Of course, it’s my own fault. I’ve been putting things in there and NEEDING to put things in that room since I came back from the USA in April.

So I worked and worked. I’ve been trying to work my newly acquired fabric into my bookcases.

I decided to just work through the shelves of the colors and reorganize by colors and if they weren’t folded with my 5” ruler, to do that as that seemed to fit these shelves the best. I kind of wanted them all the same.

purples, greens and landscapes, and cowboy got restacked (on the left). On the right, blues and some novelties towards the bottom got re-straightened. The bottom most shelf is food fabrics and I didn’t restack that.

So I did. I did not get to everything. I didn’t redo all my animal fabrics or my florals, Christmas or autumn fabrics. But I did the colors, including reds, pinks, whites, blacks/grays, browns, oranges, yellows, novelties, school, Polish folk, low volume, text, children’s fabrics.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen of this fabric - close and personal. I’m enjoying this very much because of that. I’ve been taking the colored fabrics - reds/pinks/blacks/browns/yellows/whites/blues/greens/purples and making them neat again. Some haven’t been ruler folded so I’m taking the time actually fold the ones that haven’t been folded like the rest. (The ones that hadn’t been folded were newly acquired fabrics, mostly as Rachael originally did ruler fold everything.)

from the left - text, reds, pinks, and on the bottom row, black and gray. To the right, whites, browns, tans, yellows and oranges

I am super pleased with how nice the shelves look now that they have been redone. I had the equivalent of about 2 very full boxes of fabric to work into the shelves.

The bed is ready now, the floor is vacuumed, most of the fabric is put away, and I am ready for our guest. Hey, our guests have learned they have to share the room with fabric! :)

People that stay with me these days have to understand that they will be sleeping with fabric and/or quilts in their room. It just is that way. Take it or leave it.

 
 
 

I did restack the plaids, stripes, Polish, low volume (floral) and novelties which are on the right. I didn’t do anything with the floral fabrics on the left. I also need to finish cleaning off the desk in the room. However, I’ve spent quite a bit of time on this and I’m just out of energy. Bruce will just be able to use our dining room table for work.

I will say that a lot of people staying with us have been given one or more quilts, though, so I think they already understand it just come with the territory. :)

 

In fact, Bruce was given this quilt years ago by me. Mike told me he loves sea or a marine theme so I made this one for his room and single bed that he changed to after his wife passed away from cancer. He has also helped distribute myriads of quilts to people in Ukraine.

 

Anyway, it is a relief to get this much done. :) I hope to get some more sewing done soon as this has taken quite a bit of my concentration. But as I mentioned before, getting it all restacked, folded to fit better, and really just looking at has been totally inspirational and I’ve enjoyed it. I also like how it looks now that the shelves are full again.

I also restacked my solids - though I did most of this a few weeks ago.

What I did not show you is that I ended up removing fabrics from the shelves for a set of quilts I hope to work on the rest of the year - which hopefully you will be able to see. They are in bins out near my cutting table. I hope to not have to put most of that back on the shelves. It is obvious I need to keep using up this fabric!!!

Oh - for the solids - which I know aren’t as nice as the others - that’s simply because I keep pulling things out from them - even since I reworked this I pulled some more yellow out - I want to make this pattern. I’ve cut out the black on white squares - still need to cut up some solids and the white on black, though I have those pulled and waiting for me.

This pattern calls for squares of solids with pinked edges placed on 4.5” cut squares of black on white (for the center). I do have my main blocks already cut but haven’t started sewing on some squares. I thought this was a very nice design. Super simple but doable - even though the colorful squares are appliqued on top. But I’m willing to start it - just want to give myself time as that’s a lot of cutting and appliqueing. I think I may go through my already cut strips and pull from my 2” or 2.5” strips and use what I already have partially cut. Anyway the direct link to the pattern is here.

Thanks so much for coming along with me on this journey!

Have a great day wherever you are reading this.

Becky Petersen4 Comments