A Big Birthday

Today was another one of those milestone birthdays, the big 8 - 0. It was a family day and my kids, grand kids, and great grand kids were all here with the exception of one grandson who lives out of town.  It was a nice day and though I have been unseated as the family Scrabble champion I had a great time.
We got a four generation picture of women in the family me, my daughter and her daughter, and my grandsons daughter. We missed my daughters other daughter who had to leave early and we didn't get my daughter in law in the photo. We  didn't get  photos of any of the men. Maybe we will do better Christmas Eve.





W e did get a shot of me with the great grand kids and the birthday cake; their ages are from 8 -12. It is not easy to get a picture with everyone looking good but this one turned out pretty good.
That is the celebration tablecloth on the table. I had dyed fabric at a guild workshop 20 + years ago and I was going to throw it away recently because it ran when I washed it. However, I fished it out of the waste basket and made 16 patch checkerboard blocks and added a  bright border. I thought if the colors  ran "so what". Some of them did run when it was washed and you can see it on the solid yellow back but the front looks OK and it think it makes a nice family tradition to put it on the cake table.

Christmas Decorating

Two days ago Jack set up the tree and today we bought the decorations up from the basement and I decorated the tree, He helped by getting some of the ornaments unwrapped and he put new hooks on the ones that needed it. It took a few hours to get the tree done and right after I arranged the tree skirt Miss Mona, the princess cat, settled herself on the tree skirt for a nap.

She really has very pretty green eyes but I think this glowing kind of demon look is the feline equivalent of "red eye".

No amount of coaxing or gentle prodding would convince her to leave her new napping quilt. I might as well give in because she will do whatever she wants as soon as I leave the room.

Over the last few days I also hung Christmas quilts in my sewing room. I replaced the quilts from my last post with Christmas quilts. I don't have the places to hang them that I used to have so I am working out new arrangements. I do believe that the gray flannel I use on my bulletin boards has made the colors in my photos come out true to life.

The quilt on the lower right is hung sideways and I will have to change that and I need to clean up the shelf under the wreath quilt. I found that I have 20 mug mats so I hung some of them with my 12 days of Christmas cheater smart panel.

I have some larger quilts and I am not sure what to do with them. Well..... one is on my bed and two are one the backs of chairs but I have 3 that have no place to go yet. Maybe they will find a new home.

Not much sewing going on

It seems like I have been doing everything but quilting and that means I've had nothing much to post.
I finished the tree skirt and don't have a photo of it and I already gave it away. I did finish my bedroom window curtains too.
About a month ago Jack hung my 2 bulletin boards in my sewing room, They used to be on either side of my window in my old sewing room now they are side by side like one board. I also covered some foam core panels with gray flannel and hung up 3 small bulletin boards where I hung some small pieces. I have been starving for color as there is a lot of white and brown here. There are 2 shelves above my sewing machine; the top one is about 6 ft. high and the other 24 inches below it. I put one board there with some of my small zentangle quilts. I was going to hang something more colorful  but decided to hang my tangle quilts for a while.

The shelves butt up against the bookcase in the corner,  around on the corner on the next wall I hung the next skinny bulletin board with a few small things. Next to the bulletin board is the window above my desk and on the other side I hung another small bulletin board above a tall narrow chest. A 24 inch square cat quilt hangs there. Just around the corner, above my quilt rack on the next wall, is my Diva quilt; it is 45 inches square so you can see the quilts in this collage are not to scale.

I am feeling more at home now with some of my own favorite colors around me.

When the weather turned cold this fall I put my plaid quilt on the bed but it has a lot of black in it and though it has a lot of other colors it isn't colorful enough. It is also in need of repair again as some of the patches are wearing out. I exchanged the plaid quilt for an all floral log cabin quilt, which is too heavy to sleep under. I keep it folded across the foot of the bed and only open it up if we have company (so I can show off). I quilted it in sections and used florals on the back and I like the back as well as the front.
Last Wednesday Jack hung my Red Flowers quilt over our bed.

The Red Flowers will stay where it is but I will be getting out all of the Christmas quilts this week and the rest will all be changed soon.

Tree Skirt

I am back to working on the tree skirt. I cut the remaining 5 inch squares into quarters to fold for prairie points. I also had to cut into some yardage for more red squares. then I had to find something in my stash to make up for not enough blue.
I am stitching strings of prairie points together getting ready to sew them on the tree skirt.







This is fabric for my other project, window coverings for our bedroom. I almost bought something geometric and neutral but Jack came looking for me and changed my mind. He said "get something colorful that you really like"; so I did.

Snow

I really wouldn't want to live in a place that didn't have 4 seasons I just wish winter did not have to include SNOW.
When I got up this morning there was a light covering of snow and there was fine snow coming down....... and it came down all day long. I think it stopped around 5 PM but I am not sure as it is dark now.This is what it looked like at 4 o'clock, looking toward the street. Hmmmm .....these photos look like they are black and white but they are color photos. It seems to me that the first snow of the season should be a light one not something like this.






This is on the other side of the house looking out the living room window, same view from a slightly different angle. We stayed home all day and I only ventured out once to fill the bird feeder.

 I did what I usually do when I am snowed in, I cleaned and did laundry. I did a little sewing as well. I started some improv blocks for another kitty quilt. I have a bag of unsorted scraps and I looked up some cat fabric. Here are a  few of them on my sewing machine table. If I make 12 - 8 inch blocks that should be about the size I want.

Kitty Quilts

Kitty likes to sit on my lap in the evening and she likes to sit on my sewing chair when I am at the desk. At any time of day or night she likes to curl up on the sewing chair or on the couch. I put a folded quilt on the couch for her and I put a quilt on my lap when she sits on my lap. She seems to prefer the quilts to the fleece throw that I have folded on a foot stool.

So........ I made a small quilt today for the sewing chair. I found and old cheater panel and layered it up and did some quilting around the cat and flowers and border, just enough to hold the layers together. I used Bernina #4 serpentine stitch close to the edge and trimmed it leaving the batting exposed. If it doesn't hold up after washing I will stitch over the edge again.




I considered piecing 2 smallish quilts one for the couch and one for my lap when she sits there, something that can be more easily washed. Instead, I am going to cut up the quilt that is on the couch and make smaller ones.  It is an old quilt  that has seen a lot of use and it has worn places. It is one that I made from block swap blocks and while I have always liked, it it holds no sentimental value. It is still  colorful and kitty seems to like it so I think that it is a good use for it.







I picked her up to put her quilt on the chair and here she is, thinking it over. I thought maybe she would be unhappy with being disturbed but she seemed to accept it OK. She used to be a cranky cat but in her old age (almost 14) she is really sweet.

I think she likes it. 

Tree Skirt - Getting There

I am slowly making progress on the tree skirt. I had all the wedges laid out in the order I wanted to sew them in pairs. after all the pairs are sewed together there is always some adjusting to be done when something shows up that didn't before sewing. I kept everything in order pretty well but then when I sewed the pairs into 4's I got the order mixed up and I had to lay everything out again on my bed (no design wall yet). Every time I sewed a few more seams I checked to see how it looked and made some more adjustments. I finally sewed the last seam and I see that there are a couple of places that have two patches of the same color next to each other. They are not the same prints so it will stay the way it is.  After all "Random is Random" and after all my arranging and rearranging and getting things out of order it sure is random.

This is half of it pinned to a design board. Behind it is one of my bulletin boards, foam core covered with gray flannel. I covered my boards with gray because a couple bloggers, who seem knowledgeable about photography, said that if you have some gray pinned to the design wall or photographing area the colors are more true. My photos with the gray behind the tree skirt look more like the real thing than the photos without the gray.

 .

Tree Skirt

I am back to working on the tree skirt. The 9 degree wedge ruler I ad ordered from Amazon came yesterday; it took a long time to get here partly due to being sent to my old address. I cut all my wedges in the afternoon and arranged them in the order I want.I had arranged the strips of charm squares the way I wanted them but after they were cut in wedges there were narrow wedges that needed to be placed where they look the best.

Here is  the stack all ready to sew in pairs. that little pile of trimmings is about 1/2 of all I have left. Using Annie's tutorial,  You get 1 wide wedge and one narrow wedge that are used in the tree skirt and one very narrow wedge that is scrap. Last year I used those narrow scraps as a gag prize for the Basement Divas annual Jellyroll Race ( they were probably thrown in the trash). This time I took off the narrowest 2 pieces and sewed the rest together. This piece is 22 x 13 after trimming I will layer it up and quilt it and probably just add binding or or maybe turn it pillowcase style and then quilt it.
It might be good as a large hot pad for the table. LOL, when I showed it to Jack he said "what is that hodge podge." He is usually far more diplomatic than that.







Yesterday when I posted a photo collage of the Mary Ellen Hopkins tribute I did miss some quilts and I am sorry to say I do not have photos of them. I missed 2 of Kathy's and one of Lynn's. I even remember talking about one of them and for some reason I didn't get a photo. If I get photos from someone I will post them.

I'm so sorry Kathy and Lynn.

MEH Tribute/Challenge

The Wildwood Quilt guild in Mentor, Ohio had their annual quilt show on Sunday. It has always been a very nice show and it was again this year. Several of the Basement Diva group are members of the guild and though not all of the Divas are members of Wildwood, our tribute to Mary Ellen Hopkins was hung at the show. Mary Huey, the owner of the quilt shop where we all took the "It's OK if You Sit on my Quilt" classes and continued with the "It's OK Neighborhood meetings, was also invited to hang her Mary Ellen quilts with the rest of the challenge.





This was the first chance I had to get a photo of my quilt after it was quilted.








Below is a collage of the rest of the MEH quilts. I think we all learned a lot from Mary Ellen and probably there are a large number of us who would not be quilting today it it were not for her. We also owe a lot to Mary Huey.

Here is a collage of the rest of the MEH tribute quilts; I think I got them all.

Bloggers Quilt Festival

 It's time the fall Blogger's Quilt Festival hosted by Amy's Creative Side.
This is one of the few quilts I finished this year; getting ready to move took up a lot of my time.  It i entered in the Scrappy Quilt category
This quilt is make from blocks that my friends in the Friendship block exchange group made for me.  I asked for Anvil blocks made with "made fabric"for the center square and the half square triangles could be made fabric or not. I asked for yellow or orange for the backgrounds.  Victoria (Bumblebeans) had requested that her followers make  anvil blocks with a blue background which she makes into quilts for people recently diagnosed with cancer. My friends made one block with the blue background and one block for me with yellow/orange background to make a quilt for myself.  I think I sent 12 blocks to Victoria and I had 12 blocks for my quilt from my friends and I made the rest.
The blocks are 12 inches and the half square triangles in the borders are 3 inches.

 I used one anvil block and some "made fabric" squares along with a piece of floral fabric that I had to stretch the backing fabric of which I had not enough.







Below are 2 close up shots showing the all over quilting with rows of the Bernina # 4 stitch. This was the first time I used this stitch for spaced rows and I like the look and I will use it again.









If you want to know more you can click on "anvil blocks".
Be sure to check out the other quilts in the Blogger's Quilt Festival and be sure to visit all the categories.

Tree Skirt Progress

I am making progress on the tree skirt. All of the sections of 5 charm squares are sewed together and ready to be cut in wedges. I have them pinned in order on a design board. I had sorted the charms and laid them out in the order that  I thought I would lay out the large wedges and then I will place the narrow wedges where they look best.  I will make changes as I go along but this is a starting point. Annie from Freezeframe has a nice tutorial explaining how to get two 9 degree wedges from a 5 inch strip of charm squares. This is the third tree skirt from her tutorial and it goes together easily.


The only problem I had this morning was with these two.  When I got up to pin a strip on the design board the cat came in and sat on my our sewing chair. I moved her off, under protest, and when I turned my back she got back, not once but twice more. I gave up and moved the chair over and took the design board off the other chair where it was propped. While I was doing that the dog came in and plopped down under my sewing table. We finally got ourselves sorted out and I was able to finish the strips.

The animals sure make life interesting; 

Jack says they own me.

Who would have thought it?

Scraps

I an linking up to Scraptastic Tuesday It is a monthly linkup of scrap quilts, old or new or in progress.You can read about it by clicking on the link and view the quilts and if you want link up your own scrap quilt.

I admire quilts with 2 colors or 2 fabrics or a limited number of fabrics  but it is hard for me to stick with that kind of quilt if it is of any size. For me there can never be too many colors or fabrics.

My quilt is from 2005 and I made it as an "in progress" sample for a quilt in sections class I was teaching.
I worked out a method for randomizing my scraps so each colored strip appeared on the opposite side of the braid each time it was used. I used an odd number of color families, 5 for this quilt,  and I made stacks of each fabric. I had stacks everywhere in the sewing room. They were all lined up on my sewing tables, desk, ironing boards and every horizontal surface. Then I went around the room and I picked them up in order of red, blue, green, yellow, and orange to make working stacks. I also had a stack of "wild card strips, fabrics that didn't fit a color category to add at times when the next fabric on the stack didn't have enough contrast.  Working this way I did not have to make choices for each strip. I worked on 3 chevron strips at a time to avoid getting up to press after each addition.

My borders and vertical are not pieced but are irregular striped fabric. The binding was pieced and I rounded the corners of the quilt to avoid seams falling at the corners.

Be sure and check out the other scrap quilts, better yet, link up to one of your own and join the fun.

Inspiration?

It is really bad when I have no pictures of anything quilty to post about. I am stitching straight lines on the MEH project and one photo looks like another.

However... I think I might work this pattern up in EQ and give it a try. This is a Kleenex box that was in a large Kleenex package in assorted patterns. I noticed just now as I am sitting here that where the ends of the box are folded to make the box square the pattern is perfectly matched. I like the colors and I think I can come up with an easy pattern. Could this be desperation because I've had nothing much for a long time to post about quilting?

I am finding inspiration here in our new location, though I am not sure I can interpret it in a quilt.
 These first 2 photos are both shots of the same view from the front side of the house. It was a foggy morning last week  and the angle of the sun gave  a golden glow to the fog. Of course it is impossible to capture that exactly.



This photo was taken on the other side of the house in August about 7:45PM. I have always loved the way the sun shines in the windows or filters through the trees at that time of day when the sun is low in the sky. This too gave the air a golden glow.  I came across these photos when I was looking for birthday party pictures to put in a digital album. I also found this one below.

These are the animals who have trained me as a companion. When I got up very early one morning they came in the sewing room to keep me company. The dog just went to sleep in  the corner but the cat sat on my sewing chair and talked to me. This has now become their habit. Kitty frequently looks me up and talks to me. I thought she was saying meow but I have learned her language and I have come to understand that she is saying nnnow. Meaning she wants to eat NOW or she wants to go out NOW or she wants me to sit down in the recliner and provide a lap for her to sit on NOW whereupon she will allow me to pet her.

Being a companion has it's perks; kitty provides some extra warmth when I am cold and walking the dog adds about 4800 steps of good exercise.

MEH Challenge and Birthdays

I am slowly making some progress on the Mary Ellen Hopkins Diva challenge. I work a little and stop and think a little. now that I have finally decided how I will quilt the octagon spaces it should move along faster. I am going to quilt through them as though they were 9 patches. I am not going to quilt across the strips that l want to look as though they are on top of the strips they cross. That means a lot of stops and starts. I looked at Mary Ellen's quilts in the book I have and it appears that most or all of them that straight or diagonal allover grids; that would have been easier but it is what it is now.

I am sure I am not alone in second guessing as there are always more than one way to do something and not every options appears to us before we start. I have to remember that though I can see a better option after I have finished (or gotten half way through) I have never felt I ruined a quilt with my quilting.









Fall is the time for great grand child birthdays. This one below was 3 weeks ago. The tall boy in the back row is a friend and the other 5 are my great grands. It is really hard to get a photo with everyone looking decent. There is always someone moving or clowning around. The birthday boy here is in the orange and brown shirt. The birthday theme was ninja turtles. You can see the celebration tablecloth  that I  made from hand dyed fabric that I almost threw away. It came through the party without mishap (big surprise).
The blond boy in the lower left corner has a July birthday and we usually have a big family outdoor party at their house,  This year his dad was recovering from a tib/fib leg fracture with no weight bearing and grandma and grandpa (my daughter and son in law) were
 spending every minute getting ready for our move out here so.... no big party this year for David. He did get his presents though and some arrived at his cousin's birthday party, he seemed happy with that.


 This was the second fall birthday last weekend, same 5 ggkids and same place, same celebration table cloth. This is the oldest great grand, he is 12 this year. His cake was his choice, over the top chocolate brownie cake with chocolate frosting and slathered with M&M's. I forced myself to eat one piece I had to have ice cream with it in order to tone down the chocolate.
Next week will be another birthday party and then no parties till November. We always celebrate the only girl party at Thanksgiving; I don't think she minds.

I have decided that I am going to make a Birthday Quilt to replace that rather lame Happy Birthday banner. Maybe I will make it so we can change out the name for each birthday.

In December I will have a BIG birthday. 

Would it be alright 

to have the birthday quilt 

for the first time 

on my birthday?

Would that seem  

like I was making myself 

TOO IMPORTANT.

Tree Skirt Again

When our church group had our retreat we took some time on Saturday afternoon To visit a couple of quilt shops. i was looking for Christmas charm packs but didn't see any but I saw a kit in one of the shops that included a layer cake Solstice by Kate Spain. I didn't want the kit but that was the only way to buy the layer cake. I guess I could have waited but now that we have move it is not so easy anymore to get out to the quilt shops.

I cut the layer cake into 5 inch squares over the weekend and and on Monday I sorted them into rows of 5 squares to a row in the way I want to sew them together. Here they are on a tray in stacks of 5 squares. Right now they are in order but after I cut wedges with a 9 degree ruler the order will likely change some.





 I made 2 tree skirts using this tutorial from Annie (Freezeframe), It is  good tutorial and not hard to do.The one on the left is the second one that I made.











 I am still quilting the MEH challenge. These blocks are 4 1/2 inches  and I am wishing that I had made smaller blocks;  I am going to have to do some quilting in the negative spaces.

It is not going to be quick!

Quilting........Finally

Yesterday, Mr Spontaneous decided to put u some shelves here and there, which I have been waiting for. We spent some time in the basement looking for shelf hardware and we moved lots of boxes looking for it. We both got kind of cranky and when Jack sat down to rest I came upstairs to look for the hardware. My daughters friend was here and when they didn't hear Jack making any noise the friend wondered if I did something to him. I think she was joking. Anyway when I got back downstairs he told me that while he was sitting there thinking he remembered where he had put the stuff when he took it out of the box weeks ago.  So the shelves are up and some more things have been put away, which means they are out of the sewing room. I had set up my space for quilting but  I never did get back to the sewing room, except for getting things out of boxes to put away. 

Today I got the thread box out and decided what I want to use and I started quilting my Basement Diva, Mary Ellen Hopkins challenge quilt. I am still not sure exactly how I will quilt everything but I have started quilting in the ditch and I believe I will be changing some things when the pattern changes. Mary Ellen named this Metamorphosis and I think I will keep that in mind as I quilt it. 

We'll see how it goes.

Retreat

Six of us from the quilt group at church went to our annual retreat at a YMCA camp in NW Pa. We met there on Friday and got settled in our rooms in a nice lodge just across the lawn from our work area. We had a lovely big room to work in,with big windows on 3 sides and enough space for triple the number of people who attended.

 This was the view from the windows at the end of the room.

Most of our meals are in the dining hall right across from our sewing/quilting room.
We have our meals with whoever is camping there that week end. It has usually been the Father/Daughter week end for the the Y Indian Guides and it was again this year. It is nice to just walk across the hall and have our meals without having to cook or go out somewhere. The food is not gourmet but it is adequate and we have no complaints. Friday there is no dinner served so we bring something for a pot luck meal.

Everyone was productive. Betty, Dorine and Cathy are show their with their projects below each of them.




























Betty and Cathy each worked pretty steadily on one project, a double 4 patch for Betty and a Judy Neidemier paper piece project for Cathy. Dorine had 4 projects,  2 that were finishes and 2 that she started. This is a T shirt quilt that she started Saturday from her fathers Bald Eagle T shirts. Her Dad passed away this past year and she is making this for her mother.

Elaine, on the left, had more than one project too. She made a baby quilt from a kit and applied binding to another quilt and made these "Take 4" batik placemats.
Kim worked on one project all weekend. She had a lot more blocks in more colors that she finished after I put my camera away.
































I layered up my Mary Ellen Hopkins Basement Diva challenge; it was great to have 4 tables pushed together to work on. I made "Take 4" placemats too; I didn't finish them at the retreat but I did finish them today. Somehow, I managed to make one of them 1/2 inch wider even though I trimmed them all very carefully. I know how I did it. I decided they all needed to be just a bit smaller and I was interrupted after the first one and I had not written down the measurement. So..... when I got back to to trimming, I just went ahead and cut without checking.

There is no photo of me but if you look closely I am reflected in the window behind Betty while shooting her photo.

Watermelon Inspiration

Jack's favorite summer fruit is watermelon and we have been eating a lot of it this summer. It seems like as soon as one is all gone we buy another. After the second one I told him that we were not buying another watermelon unless we bought a watermelon knife. As quickly as the words were out of my mouth, he did a quick U turn and went to the aisle where they were located and  picked up a watermelon knife.


So.... I have been cutting up a lot of watermelon. The knife does make it easier and the watermelon this year seems to be especially good  and, though I too like watermelon but I will be happy to see the last of them for a while






Now that we live where there is a compost pile I have not only been cutting up watermelon I have been cutting up the rind so it will compost faster.
This photo shows the rind from the last one that Jack choose. It was the biggest one to date and I told him from now on I will pick the watermelons.
I really took the photo because I thought the color combination was pretty, it would look good in a quilt.

You never know 

from where 

your inspiration 

will come.

A Little Quilting

I set up my Q Snap quilting frame yesterday with my BIG UFO and did a little quilting. This quilt has been around  for probably 10 years or more and I get it out every once in a while. The ladies in
The Friendship Group made the blocks one year and the border blocks another year. It was my first year in the Friendship group and I asked for 2 - 12 inch blocks.
I said I would like all the fabrics to be different but it was OK to repeat the neutral fabrics if they needed to. It is a testimony to their good nature that they did not elect to toss me out of the group. Those blocks have 48 pieces. In my defense I did ask the shop owner who was the leader of the group if it was OK to ask for that block and she assured me that it was.

 This is a closeup of one block showing  the sashing which formed another secondary block. Most of the quilting is in the ditch with circles in the block center and 3 overlapping circles in the sashing neutral rectangles. I have decided that when I get the quilting finished in the center of the quilt I am going to machine quilt the borders. The quilting will be in the ditch and I am telling myself it will be OK. I do not want this hanging around unfinished for another 10 or more years.


 I believe that the configuration of this room is more conducive to having the frame left up. I can get around it easily to get at anything and it will easily move to the other side of the room when I set up for machine quilting the MEH Diva challenge quilt.


The photo on the left is where I have my machine and one of my work/cutting tables. The quilt frame is set up at the end of that table.There are still some boxes under the table that are waiting to be unpacked when there re shelves on which to put their contents.




These two are my trainers. They are training me to be a proper companion to them. They have taught me to understand pretty well their oral commands and body language .

When I started to photograph them the cat followed me everywhere I moved and posed for me. The dog moved where I told him to but didn't seem too excited to have his picture taken.


I guess I am working out OK as a companion. The dog was prodding me to get up from the computer last evening and when got up to go to the living room he cat was waiting in the hall and followed me to my chair where she promptly jumped up on my lap and curled up, purring, the minute I sat down.

A Little Sewing etc.

I  did a little sewing today, the key word here is little. I finally got round to piecing the back for the Diva MEH challenge.  I should say I started it; I sewed 2 short seams before we took off on another shopping trip. I had to piece a 20 inch wide strip of the big dot fabric that will
 go down the center with  4 inch strips  of the zigzag on each side. If I had purchased 6 1/2 yards of the dots instead of whatever it was that I did purchase, I would have been able to get by with one long seam. I don't remember my logic if there was any logic for buying that amount but it will be OK. Quilts usually turns out to be more interesting when I run short and have to improvise.

I didn't get any further today because Mr Spontaneous was ready to go and shop for another 4 foot Lifetime table. We didn't find it so I will have to order it to pick up at the store. I am finding that out here everything is far away. When we decide to shop for something it is not a few blocks away as it was in our apartment. We have lived a short distance from everything for the past 40 years and this is a big change. Walmart is close and Walgreen's and Rite Aid and Giant Eagle are close. The Mall and Joann's and the quilt shops are no longer 10 to 20 minutes away. I will have to plan my shopping trips a little better and that is probably a good thing.


I

Not there yet!

We are still settling in. As always the sewing room gets all of the things that need to be dealt with, either unpacked,  disposed of, put away to a yet to be determined space or decided upon.
I am trying to make a decision about whether I want shelves or a design wall on the one open wall. I am leaning toward shelves and thinking over the options for a  portable design wall. I have  several design boards that I use that I can stow away when they are not in use.

I have some things in the sewing room that were not there before. the blue chair ended up there when the movers brought it in and it will not be staying, it may go to another room or it may go out the door. The narrow chest in the corner was in the sewing room before and holds odds and ends of sewing supplies like freezer paper and fusible web and other general supplies.  The green cabinet is 30" W x 23" D x 80" tall; Jack built it for me a long time ago before I started quilting,for craft supplies. Over the years it has held various things, most recently, it was in the living room and had season and occasionally used table ware, vases, seasonal decorations etc.  It is staying in the sewing room and holds Christmas dishes, quilts and things waiting for shelves. The Christmas dishes will stay, I think I will keep the quilts that are not wall hangings where they are. I plan to use one shelf for kids games. The closet in the room where the grand kids sleep when they visit is completely full of toys and games. the games that I have that are not duplicates can stay in the cabinet, along with kids craft items that they always used, when they visited. I am sure I will be seeing more of them from now on.
So.... no sewing yet, but soon. I don't want to start working on anything until I find a permanent place for most things. In the mean time I have not abandoned my blog but I have no quilting photos to post.

We are making progress, a little every day.