Monday was link up day for the Simply Needle and Thread challenge on Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville blog. I am now, late on Friday night, writing my blog to add to the link up. I was working on the oldest UFO in my collection. . . . a quilt made from a pre-cut kit that I purchased in the mid-70's. It has 25 blocks. And long ago eleven of the blocks had been quilted by hand. Then it was put away and hadn't been touched in over a decade. Perhaps close to two decades. I got it out and have this month hand quilted three more blocks. I didn't write down the time involved, but I worked on them pretty much every day and put in at least an hour each time. Sometimes as many as three hours. I am working on size and consistency of the stitches. Previous blogs have included pictures of my recent endeavors at hand quilting.
Last week I was out of town. I was visiting my other home a thousand miles away. I flew. So I didn't take the current hand quilting project. I watched one night of quilt cam and wasn't working on anything along with Bonnie. The next day I decided to work on something during quilt cam. So I started cutting up remnants into strips, rectangles and squares a la Bonnie's Scrap Savers System. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of this project. But it felt great to get lots and lots of strips, squares and rectangles put together.
After getting back to town and attending a memorial service and a gathering of family members, I came home and worked some more on the hand quilting. But a stack of mens shirts from thrift stores was calling out to me, so I have spent a few evenings deboning shirts. I didn't get a picture of the before stack, but I took one of the mass of smaller pieces. Eight shirts were deboned in the making of this collection!
Smaller pieces from eight deboned shirts
Clearly there are a lot of blues here. Five of the eight. The pieces in the lower right are from a beautiful shirt that will probably go in the neutral bin, but it really has a lot of nice color in it. I have trouble with acquiring neutrals, but when I did the shopping for shirts, I tried to get stuff I like as well as some neutrals. Some of these blues might even go into the neutrals, or at least into a light pile! I also have some red shirts to debone, they just didn't happen to be in this stack. I probably need to launder them.
Which might be as good a segue into Chaos as I can muster! I have trouble getting to all of the things I need to get to in terms of chores and quilting and other things in life because I get overwhelmed with stuff. Both literal and figurative stuff! But mostly literal! I have too much stuff. Its sometimes hard to figure out places to put all the stuff and get it out of the way in order to clean. So there is definitely the CHAOS (can't have anyone over syndrome) in effect here.
And over time this year I have acquired a lot of the wardrobe of a family member who has been losing a lot of weight and I've been losing it too and moving through her old size range. So a bunch of shirts to be deboned and a bunch of clothes for me to wear are all sitting in the garage near the washer and dryer; just waiting to be laundered.
Bonnie has been such a good inspiration on me to work on my quilting activities, maybe that will spill over into my extra-curricular laundering I need to do! One can hope!
And I will get back to the oldest UFO, soon!
Ok, so now it's Saturday night, or rather early, early Sunday morning. After I got home from work a few hours ago, I did some work uniform laundry. And after that load went through the washer, I put in a small load of shirts that hadn't been washed. So on with that project. Baby steps!
Ok, so now it's Saturday night, or rather early, early Sunday morning. After I got home from work a few hours ago, I did some work uniform laundry. And after that load went through the washer, I put in a small load of shirts that hadn't been washed. So on with that project. Baby steps!
Yep. Baby steps. That's what I've been working on, too. As you said in your comment on my blog post, we are living parallel lives. I didn't mention it in my post, but I deboned a few shirts, too. Keep up the good work, every step forward helps!
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