Moved!

We are moved and it went pretty well with nothing broken or damaged. Last Tuesday we ran out of steam and time when we were packing and that wasn't too bad after all. We went back to our old apartment on Monday this week to finish up taking down the window coverings and getting all the stuff in the bathroom vanity. Jack patched nail  and screw holes while I cleaned the stove and refrigerator. We left more stuff to gather up than I thought and when we once again ran out of steam I called for help and our DIL and her friend came and helped us.
At this end we could have paid a little more attention to the unloading as some things went to the basement because they were not marked and in the sewing room the boxes ended up in the corners and along the walls and the furniture and more boxes in the center of the room. By the time I paid attention it was too late and it took 2 days to get it sorted out. It is still not finished but I can move around but there will be no sewing for a while.
My computer has been acting up for a while and I thought it was my mouse and we replaced it and my keyboard with a new wireless mouse and keyboard, however........... everything worked fine but I started having the same problems again and Jack went on line and ordered me a new Dell. It came yesterday and I am in the process of sorting out what I want to transfer. I have a lot of stuff that I don't want to transfer and a lot that I had previously but on a flash drive.  No pictures today! With all my computer issues I am not even going to try.

A little lesson

The Basement Divas met today I took a break from packing. I won a basket at a meeting recently and one of the items in the basket was Susan Cleveland's Piping Hot Binding tool and booklet. Jan had taken a class with Susan when she taught locally a year or so ago and today she gave me a lesson.

Here is my little 9 1/2 inch square with piping and binding. It is always so much easier to have someone who knows how to do something demonstrate than to go through the directions myself and bumble through. Jan was very nice and patient, as she always is.
Almost all my fabric has been packed up as well as all of the  various feet from all 3 of my machines.  I found this little square already quilted along with 4 strips that I has used to demo faux piping a long time ago. I had one box of black fabric still not packed up where I found something to use for binding.  Jan set up her own machine for me to use for my lesson. I now have a new technique to use. Even though it is an easy technique, I might have given up at the first thing that went wrong if I had done this on my own. Thanks Jan.
It was good to get away from the mess for a few hours and it is always good to get together with my friends. There are packed boxes everywhere and the end is in sight. Jack says anything not packed up by Wednesday he will just throw in whatever boxes are empty; that will be just fine with me.

Progress

We are making progress but it sure is a mess around here. After Jack got all his stuff sorted out he attacked turned his thoughts to the hall closet and my sewing room. We tend to have different ideas about how things should be done and we were both pretty cranky for a while. It's a good thing we really like each other and we can laugh at ourselves or it might have been ugly.
He moved all of my boxes of fabric into the living room and started packing them in boxes. I wasn't too pleased with the way he packed the plastic boxes in the moving boxes but all of those boxes below are now packed up. The sofa is no longer visible with boxes stacked 3 high in front of it.

The pile of boxes in my sewing room is getting higher than the top of my head and my shelves are now empty; and only about 3 quilts and a tree skirt hang in the closet. The quilts are pieces that I don't want to fold up because they have fused and interfaced applique that would probably be permanently creased. That pile of hangers on my chair is from all the quilts in one half of the closet.
I spent a couple of hours yesterday folding quilts on the bias and then I put them in drawers that I had emptied of  things that the movers want out of the drawers. I assume that if we can leave clothing in drawers quilts are OK too.

I don't have quilt photos to post, only a stack of 6 flimsies. I think that is a pretty respectable number of UFOs, unless you count the big King size hand quilted UFO that is more than 10 years old.

Almost all of my sewing tools and supplies are packed. I only have one thing available to work on. I am  going to use this 12 inch block as a learning piece for piping hot piping when the Basement Divas meet on the 19th. Fellow Diva Jan is going to teach how to use the piping tool and add piping. I don't know that this was the best thing to use but it was right on top in my box of blocks and now it is the only thing I have that is not packed and sealed. Our group at church  meets tomorrow and I hope I can get it layered and quilted then as there are no horizontal surfaces available for my sewing machine.
I am starting to pack the contents of the kitchen cabinets. From no on if we eat at home it will be on disposable dishes, except maybe for our coffee mugs. I don't like my coffee in a disposable cup and get cranky when I can't have a mug at the coffee shop because it is close to closing time.
There are only 10 more days before our moving date so I may not post again before then. In case I don't post do not think I have fallen off the face of the earth.

Packing and an old project

Well the packing is coming along. My sewing room is really just a packing and holding area right now. After I folded up the sewing machine table and packed up my machine I got a lot more done. I emptied all of the various drawers in my sewing room and packed up most of the contents. It seems there is always something that really needs to be packed with something from somewhere else and then I have to drag that into the sewing room and get it sorted out.

You can see my progress in these 2 photos. I have a couple of items to put in one of the boxes and then that can be sealed up. There are more boxes to pack and more that are packed in the other room but it is coming along.

This  morning I took everything but the clock down from the walls. I got all horizontal surfaces cleaned off and started gathering all the photographs from all over. I am going to take most of the photographs out of the frames and put them in albums. Of course, as I am going through all of the photos from numerous boxes, I have to look at them. Oh my goodness, Jack and I sure have changed.
When we lived in a large house I never had to store things in boxes under my bed but I had been slowly adding boxes one at a time to the under - bed storage area. Today I  dragged them all out. There were 7 - 32 quart plastic  Rubbermaid boxes and 3 - 16 quart boxes. I guess it is good that we have a king size bed. I am going to need more than one large photo album. Not all the boxes were photos there are some Christmas and season decorations too.
I found one box full of summer pants and wonder of wonders..... they all fit. I think that when I put away dark and heavy clothes, I hung up the long pants to wear but it was still too cool for shorts or Capri's.  I put them in a box under the bed rather than back up on the top closet shelf; then I forgot them. I did kind of wonder why I didn't have more summer clothes but I thought maybe they were too tight and I got rid of them. I feels like I've had and very successful shopping trip.

I didn't want  to write a post with only pictures of bare wall and packing boxes and I have nothing new to show.  I decided to show something that I made a few years ago before I started blogging.

 These 3 piece were made when the basement ladies were working our way through Ruth McDowell's piecing workbook  (we were not yet the Basement Divas). the two larger pieces are about 21 inches square and the smaller piece is about 12 inches. The one on the top left is the one from the book. There were 5 or six different piecing exercises that went into piecing the 3 leaves and piecing them together into one piece with the circle and the square. I don't remember if the curved piecing was an exercise from her book or if it was from somewhere else. I had the orange floral fabric in my stash; I had purchased the large and small scale fabric sometime earlier for something that I never  made. After I used it for the border on the first piece I wanted to use the curved piecing to surround the one large motif in the second piece but I wanted it to be different so I reversed  the placement  to put the black fabric on the outside. I had "musical chairs" block left over from and earlier basement project from the "Quilters Playtime" book project and I used the smaller scale orange fabric for a narrow 1/4 inch inner border and kind if mimicked  the curves of the borders to make an asymmetrical border. I faced the last piece instead of using binding. I tried something new with each of these pieces and I made them to all be hung together. And hang together they do, in the closet. As with so many things, I make what the fabric or the technique leads me to do and while I may like it very much, it doesn't really fit in with everything else in my home.