January

A month has passed since I last posted. Not much to show for 30 days, I have to say. I have had to spend time just sitting. I strained my back at the last guild meeting… It took a few days… to get past the worst of it, and I have had a couple of relapses… which also takes a couple of days to get over.

Right after Christmas I was at a grocery store, and found a cart full of plants marked down. I picked up 2 orchids that were in pretty poor shape. So poor in fact that all these blossoms were limp and droopy. A little water and some conversation and they perked right up. There are even some buds that have formed and will be flowers eventually. The other one, had already completed blooming, but the flower spikes, are re-sprouting.

Also in January, of the guild members offered to have our Challenge quilts as a program for a Retirement facility to help brighten the dreary winter month. 10 of us shared our quilts. We had a very receptive and appreciative audience. It was a very fun morning. We each brought our Challenge piece and one other quilt to share.

The other time consuming things is - we are preparing to sell our house. Not sure if I’ve mentioned that before or not. But our days in Virginia are numbered. I have spent much of the last month either cleaning. you know deep cleaning, or packing non essential things away. Its all for staging and preparation. I have also interviewed and obtained bids for painting and making any needed repairs. The target date is the first spring day after the last snow melts!!!

Of course this also means that I have to make my Creative Space look as inviting and completely organized as I can. I have packed away everything I can live without… and might even do so, in the future. So, to make it look pretty, I pressed and folded all, ok most of my fabrics, to a uniform size and put them on the shelves above my cutting/work table. On the left side are the batiks and on the right are the regular cottons. Two shelves have some of the African fabrics.

Oh, my…. I don’t think I will be putting my fabrics back in to plastic bins again. I do like looking at them. I also enjoyed the whole process of pressing and folding them. I revisited several pieces I had forgotten I had (some from the 80’s), found some I didn’t know I had, and in general became reacquainted with all of them. It took weeks, a couple of hours a day… give or take to get it looking like this!

One of the other things I have been playing with are the cast offs from another top. I haven’t decided what to do with it yet.. or even how I’ll finish it. I do like looking at it, though.

Once again you are all caught up on the doings around here. More Later-Beth