Thursday, December 12, 2019

Phew! Hardly a moment to breathe.

Hi all! Last I updated was on November 22. That was more than two weeks ago! It seems so long ago in some ways and only a minute ago in others.

A lot has happened in these two weeks. Let's see...

The Monday before Thanksgiving, we got the keys to our new house! I'm still in awe. It's so amazing!

That evening my son and his girlfriend flew in to spend Thanksgiving with us.
On Tuesday our house hold things were delivered to our new home. Our son and his girlfriend took care of the pets at the apartment and brought us food while we tended to the moving details.
I managed to get beds and bathrooms in order. And our daughter flew in later that evening.
Wednesday morning I continued unpacking, trying to get the kitchen set. And I soon found out that many of the boxes are mislabeled. I wasn't having any luck finding the cooking or eating utensils.
Thankfully, our awesome realtor Bruce  Lynn delivered  a pre-prepared Thanksgiving dinner ready to be popped into the oven because he knew it would be nearly impossible to unpack AND make Thanksgiving dinner. He wanted our first Thanksgiving in our new house to be amazing and not stressful.

(I highly recommend Bruce Lynn if you are getting ready to buy or sell a house in the DFW area! I could list several more things he did that was above and beyond. I appreciate all he did for us!)

To add to the blessings we had already received, our son proposed to his girlfriend over dinner. And she said, "Yes!!"  And now I can't get enough of saying, "My son and his fiance."   Aww, my heart is sooo full to overflowing!!
(I'll insert their engagement photo here if/when they give me the ok to use it.)

And then family time was over.  "My son and his fiance" flew back home on Friday. Daughter went back to school on Sunday. What wonderful time we had. It was difficult letting them go again.

All the while, I was unpacking a box here and there when there was a moment between family outings.  To this day, I still haven't found the kitchen knives, but I've got priorities like getting my sewing room going!!

However, there was a big deadline looming, I was down to the last three days to focus all my attention on getting this quilt top put together.
At the beginning of the year, the Possum Town Quilt Guild president Barb Deacon and her team of officers presented several opportunities to guild members. One of those was an "Ugly Fabric" challenge. I blogged a little bit about this in the post titled "Three Projects." If you want, you can go to the Possum Town Quilters of Columbus, MS , USA blog post and see all the blocks that were in the challenge.

I felt all the challenges were presented in a way that allowed me to show my Whimsy-ness. I was given freedom to do what I do. I was inspired...
It was as if I had been given a gift.  So I wanted to show my appreciation and give something back to PTQ 2019 President Barb.

The original idea was to have members make an extra "Ugly Fabric" challenge block secretly and give to me. But I also wanted to include those members that didn't participate in the challenge.   So the only restriction I put on these blocks were that they had to be no smaller than 8 inch and no larger than 12 inch squares.
I embroidered the name of the maker on each block.

I'm pleased with the final result. I hope Barb loves it as much as I do. (She has a longarm machine so she gets to quilt it herself 😜.) I hope that as she looks at each block and sees who made it she thinks, "yes, that looks exactly like something she would make!"

Oh, yes!  I wanted to tell you a couple ways that packing paper can be repurposed! It really came in handy when I was working on this top.

It can be used to sketch applique designs...
And it's great as a stabilizer for stitching the fused appliques.
 
Tearing the paper away was super easy.



Thursday morning found me at the local USPS store posting this quilt top over-night delivery to Mississippi so it could be presented to Barb at the PTQ Christmas party on Saturday.  I'll tell you, there's nothing like waiting until the last minute!! If I was any later in finishing, I would have had to drive it to MS myself. Phew!

As I've been unpacking and setting up my sewing room, of course I'm unpacking UFOs (UnFinished prOjects.) ...
...but I think that's it for now.  I'm going to take a moment to breathe and enjoy the many recent blessings. I'll come back soon(ish) and tell you what UFO is back on the work table now, as well as the new project I couldn't resist starting.
Wishing you many blessings.

No comments:

Post a Comment