Tag: Australia

Star Spangled Headache of Personal Liberation

3 Comments
The only quilty project I brought with me to Australia is Junebug’s eventual bed quilt, affectionately named the “Star Spangled Diamonds Quilt” because it (originally) was made only from Riley Blake’s “Star Spangled” fabric collection, and it’s made out of sixty degree diamonds, pieced together EPP style.  (I expect no admiration for my naming skills on this one.)
It was to be my (ironic) Australian masterpiece, making use of my time down under to hand piece seventy-two blocks out of brilliantly American-patriotic fabric—as my time here is time without access to a sewing machine.
(Funny aside:  When I asked our “relocation specialist” if it would be possible to bring my sewing machine with me to Australia, she actually laughed out loud and asked me why I would want to do that.  “I quilt,” I replied.  “Oh,” she said, “Well, why don’t you treat this trip as a vacation rather than keeping up on house work?”
I made some sort of agreeable murmur in response, so shocked I was that she would even assume quilting was some sort of obligatory chore I had to do.  I’d forgotten, what with my past decade surrounded by the Maker Movement and amazing fellow crafters, that not everyone looks upon creative pursuits as enjoyable ventures.  And while it’s true that, based upon the state of our luggage’s contents when we arrived in Aus, my sewing machine was better left at home, I am missing it sorely every day.  House work.  Sigh.)
So I have this immense, entirely pieced-by-hand project; which is totally OK because I have no sewing machine.  The timing is perfect! 
The timing, yes; the execution…well, not so much.
While smugly pleased with how my life had ironed out so neatly to allow for all this hand piecing, and looking forward to my six months of blissful stitching, I had an entire house to pack up into suitcases and put everything else in storage.  I packed up my craft room first, seeing how I knew exactly what I needed in our new home, creativity-wise.  Easy peasy, pack it up.  First.  Then pack everything else on top of it, around it, and in front of it.  The craft room’s contents are contained in boxes in the farthest corner of the basement, with bookshelves, clothing, and furniture stacked neatly around them all.
Which was fine until I realized, after arriving in Australia, that I was fast running out of my main fabric—the mostly white prints that make up the stars in each block—and upon taking a moment to do a quick count, I realized that I was indeed short on those fabrics by more than half.  In fact, I only had about one third of the needed amount.  One third, because I only cut the same amount of white as the colors, momentarily forgetting that there are six white diamonds in each block, and only two of each color.  I have all I need (and then a little extra) of the red, aqua, and blue fabrics, but the main fabrics are short by two thirds and, even if I could remember exactly which box those fabrics were packed away in and could describe it to our house sitters, it’s in the farthest corner of my basement, hedged in by almost everything we OWN.
[Insert an entire week of silent fury at myself for being such a smug little idiot.]
So, as I came to the eventual acceptance of my situation, I decided I had a few options:
1.       Have the house sitters find my original fabric.  (Highly unlikely.)
2.       Buy more Star Spangled fabric and pay the ridiculous shipping to have it shipped to me in Australia.  (Bank account difficulties make this near impossible right now.)
3.       Put the project aside until we returned home.  (Then what the heck else am I going to do with my fidgety self while we’re here?!?!  And, remember, the timing was perfect for this project!)
4.       Buy some low volume white fabric here in Australia and just grin and bear the fact that the fabric would no longer be mostly from the “Star Spangled” fabric collection.  (Oh, heart…everything will be OK…I think.)
You see, somewhere along the journey of immersing myself into this quilting world that exists nowadays, I’ve picked up on the sentiment that staying within a particular fabric collection will draw more attention to your work.  I see all these beautiful quilts being made from single fabric collections, which guarantees perfect color coordination and theme incorporation in fabric choices.  I like that.  I also like that this kind of perfect color harmony appears to afford more pins, comments, likes, and awards.  And I’m of the opinion that this particular quilt could be a serious contender at the next county fair, what with the hand piecing and theme.  (Patriotic counts for a lot at fairs!)
With a resigned heart in regards to my quilt’s descent into obscurity, I made my way (on the left-hand side of the road) to the local quilt shop here in Bundaberg.  When the kids asked what we were doing, I sighed and said that I’d left Junebug’s quilt’s fabric at home in the States, and that we were going to try to find some replacement fabric here in Australia.  “We get to buy fabric for my quilt in Australia?!?!” Junebug squealed, “That’s SO COOL!  I’m going to have Australia fabric in my quilt!”  And she skipped into the store, eager to begin the hunt.
We found two mostly white polka dot prints straight away, although I didn’t really want to get the red and pink polka dot fabric because pink broke with the whole “red, white and blue” thing we had going on in the quilt.  “But Mom,” Junebug frowned, “the pink dots are pretty, and there aren’t a lot of them.”  Sigh.  Alright.
We came across some plaids and ginghams, but those received an instant thumbs-down from Junebug.  “What is wrong with plaid?” I asked, while simultaneously trying to smother Monkeyboy’s hands within my own in an attempt to save all the thread, buttons and embroidery floss from disastrous endings.  “I don’t know,” she said, “it’s just too square-y.”
“But it matches the whole ‘Fourth of July’ theme of your quilt,” I said, “it’s actually rather perfect.  See?  Picnic blanket fabric.”
She wrinkled her nose.  Fine, no plaid today.  Perhaps I could talk her into it at a later time.
And then we went head-to-head over the next fabric choice.  While it technically had a white background, it was a floral print teeming with not only pink, but also yellow and green.  “This fabric does not match your quilt,” I said, breathing hard as I struggled to keep Monkeyboy on my hip, “put it back on the shelf and let’s look for something that matches better.  There’s no yellow or green or pink in your quilt.  It doesn’t go.  Put it back.”  Junebug, who had spotted the bolt on her own and brought it to me with triumph shining in her eyes, cast her eyes down upon the fabric in her hands, running her palm over the print, tracing the flowers with her beautiful little fingers before murmuring to herself, “But it’s so pretty.”
And that was the moment that woke me up.  My adorable little girl, my first grader missing one of her front teeth, had found something she thought was beautiful and I was shutting her down based upon the imagined opinions of complete strangers.  The fabric WAS pretty; on any other day I’d buy a yard of the stuff based simply upon its eye candy merits.  It would look lovely in anything, but it would completely destroy the cohesive look I was going for with this quilt.
This quilt…was her quilt.  Her quilt.  Her quilt that we had dreamed about and planned out together, with her input being the highest priority every step of the way.  (Why else would I ever, EVER agree to hand piecing an entire twin-sized quilt?!?!)
Pins and ribbons be damned.
I whisked that bolt of fabric out of her arms just as she was turning to take it back to the shelf.  “You’re right,” I said, “it is pretty.  How about we get twice as much of this one as the others?”
The gap-toothed smile she gave me was all I needed to know that I’d made the right choice.
 It really is pretty.
Rundown for the month of August:  I whipped out twelve more blocks, smashing my record of five blocks in both June and July.  I now have twenty-two blocks done, only fifty more to go.  (That’s 30% done, people!  Woot woot!)
Goals for September:  I’d like to piece at least ten more blocks, and hopefully get one whole quadrant of the quilt pieced together (eighteen blocks).  I had to divide up all my “original” white stars into four piles so that the fabrics will be distributed evenly throughout the quilt; so, although I have more than eighteen blocks at the present, I can’t piece them together.  Once I get enough “new” white stars put together to add up to eighteen in one section, I can start assembling.
Linking up with:

Monday Morning Star Count @ Life Under Quilts

Rainbow Lorikeets

5 Comments

We’ve moved into our “permanent” residence for the rest of our stay here in Australia.  The first place we were was only for three weeks or so while we waited for our current house to become available.  Michael was adamant that I would like this house better, which I doubted when we moved into the first house because the first house was very, very nice.  Now that we’re in the second house, I will totally admit that he was correct.  Both houses are huge and close to the beach, but this second house also boasts this:

My kids are so finally learning how to swim.

The other side of the backyard looks like this:

See that big tree bush thing in the middle?  It is a haven for birds.  There are multiple birds in that thing every minute of the day, slowly waddling along the lengths of the branches, sucking the nectar out of the weird honeysuckle-like pods that grow on it.

My favorite birds that visit are the Rainbow Lorikeets.  They usually visit in pairs, and we’ve seen as many as five at a time making their slow searches through the branches.  We eat lunch out on the patio almost every day now, just so we can watch these beautiful creatures as they eat.  Lunch has never been such a quiet event in our family, ever.  Even Monkeyboy silently munches on his sandwiches while his little eyes follow the Lorikeets’ movements.

I was trying to get a good picture of this guy’s underside
to show how colorful their bellies are, and he was scooting along
and totally bumped his head on the intersection of that branch! Hee hee!

Because this place wasn’t beautiful enough, right?  Goodness me, it’s just wonderful to just look at the world here.  You can’t get enough of the light, the trees, the colors…it’s just gorgeous.  Hopefully I can get some photos of some of the other insanely-colorful birds flitting about all regular-like each day.

These are my favorites, even when they’re squawking their little heads off at each other.  Michael tells me that there’s “Lorikeet Trees” in various parts of the city where big flocks of them go to roost at night and you can’t hear another person yelling at you right next to you because the birds are so ridiculously loud.  I’m glad we don’t have that problem, just the occasional squabble every couple of hours.  It’s worth it though, to look at those brilliant feathers.  So pretty.

Fourth Time’s the Charm!

1 Comment
I schedule my crafts.  Honestly.  I sit down at the beginning of a new year and brainstorm all the things I’d like to make, keeping new babies, weddings, and the like in mind, and then I schedule my time and projects accordingly.  I’ve found that this approach allows me to finish the things that are important to me, and still allow me a little wiggle room if I finish things quicker than I had planned upon.
As you can imagine, I loaded my craft schedule pretty heavily with quilts this year.  January through May was consumed with work on the Storybook Hexagon Quilt because I wanted to be able to present it to my dear friend Rachel when her long sought daughter was born in June.  (Oh, what fun that was!  I still smile when I recall her shocked face when it was pulled from the gift bag.  That was a good day.)
And then I scheduled the summer for working on Junebug and Monkeyboy’s quilts for their bedroom, which I had planned to redecorate over summer break.  Alas, this was not to be because of the whole “let’s move to Australia” thing, but I did get a good start on their quilts.  Monkeyboy’s quilt parts have stayed behind in America; and, because Junebug is a little stinker and changed her mind about her quilt pattern at the last minute, I’ve brought along the pieces for her quilt because it’s all done by hand.  As I could not bring my sewing machine with me, having that big handwork project is rather perfect.
When I was sitting down with  my spreadsheet in January, figuring out what projects to plug into what weeks, the last halfof the year just would not schedule out.  I’d try to apply my brain to the task, but seemed to be thinking my way through a hazy cloud.  (This should have been my first clue that something out of the ordinary was brewing for our family this year…)  I wanted to do some cute Halloween crafts, begin a gorgeous Christmas quilt, maybe make a few new-baby items to stash away for when I’m inevitably surprised by one of my siblings having a new baby and I somehow missed the five months of announcements on Facebook.  But nope, nothing felt right in the September through December time slot.
I stewed on the predicament for days.  I don’t like leaving empty space in my schedule.  I know, from previous experience, that empty spaces in my schedule means zero progress on my projects.  I’m not a fan of that.
And then, a few nights later, as I was in that twilight doze right before true sleep, it came to me:  The Peacock Feathers Stole.
Perfection.  A big block of time, unencumbered with any other projects to distract me, all set aside to finally tackle and conquer this unconquerable project that has kicked my heinie three times already in the past five years.  I will knit this pattern.
And I am.  Finally:
I started working on it a week before we left the States.  My previous three attempts have never seen me progress beyond row eight, but here I am today, proudly waving  ROW 108.  I’ve never gotten even halfway through Chart #1, and here I am, firmly entrenched in Chart #6!  (Chart #6 is long.  I’ll be here for about another month…ugh.)
The secret to my success this time:  Going ridiculously slow.  This time around, I’ve scheduled myself for only five days a week, and a maximum of four rows a day.  (That’s just two charted rows, as each row is purled on the backside, easy peasy…except for those sneaky double yarn-overs that require a little concentration on the return row.)  This “only twenty rows a week” schedule boasts March 2015 as the earliest possible completion date, compared to my earlier efforts that would churn this out in two or three months.  But you know what?  It’s working, and that’s all that matters.
It’s for my granny.  When I was really starting to get a feel for more advanced knitting, we did a little online window shopping of pretty knitted things and I showed her this pattern because I thought she’d like it.  She most certainly did like it, and the proud little knitter in my heart saluted and opened my mouth to offer to make it for her.  Unsurprisingly, she accepted the offer, and I made myself busy with procuring the supplies.  Unknown to myself at the time, I was pregnant with Monkeyboy, a fact that would become known to me a day before I received the pattern and yarn in the mail, because I was suddenly so nauseated and tired that the only thing I could be was pregnant. 
Barely able to move, and super sick all day long sounds like a perfect time to hunker down and do some soothing knitting, right?  Wrong.
Because the thing about this pattern is that it’s intense.  It’s a ton of symbols, which don’t really scare me, but whoa, those pages are pretty black with ink, and it’s got funky little spots where you have to actually reposition your stitch markers in order to work the stitches correctly and then put the stitch marker to the other side of the stitch.  It’s not cool.  It kicks my butt.  Add the nausea on top of that, and yeah, Try #1 didn’t last long.
Try #2, after Monkeyboy had arrived, lasted a week.  My sleep-deprived brain couldn’t handle it.
Try #3 was destroyed by my adventuresome lad four different times in the first two days.  My nerves couldn’t take it, and I decided that I was not in a chapter of my life that could handle advanced lace knitting.
And here we are, with Try #4, and it’s going very, very well.  The Boy no longer chews on yarn, removes needles from projects, or grabs projects out of my hands and runs off through the house laughing like a maniac with yarn trailing behind him.  (All important factors to successful knitting.)  I have months upon months scheduled, thereby eliminating any due date stress.  There are no newborns or growing-into-newborns in my future, and I get my eight hours of sleep almost every night.  Perfection.

Beautiful peacock perfection.  I love it.

Watching Humpback Whales in Hervey Bay

Leave a comment
Penguin celebrate her eighth birthday shortly after we arrived in Australia, and she decided she wanted to go on a whale watching tour to see the humpback whales that famously stop over in the area to mate and calve.  I was able to snag a couple of good pictures from the boat, and thought I’d share:

the big, long plane ride

1 Comment

Hello there. You’ll have to excuse my punctuation and other errors, because this post coming to you strictly from the voice recognition software of my phone. The pictures my Instagram account, and it looks this may be the only way that I can update the blog while we are Australia.it turns out that the internet connection we have here isn’t very good, in fact, it’s rather ancient.I’m not sure there’s much we will be able to do about it, so I’ll try my best to post updates, but…yeah.

so, yes, we are here! We left Utah on July 26 and flew to Los Angeles. We stayed a few days in Los Angeles, as witnessed by my blog post there, and on July 29th we flew out of Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia. That flight was aboard an enormous plane, eating something like 800 people, and the flight lasted 14 hours. Almost all the flights had television screens built into the backs of the seats, so the kids had no trouble at all with the long flights.

our flight to Sydney left Los Angeles at 10 p.m. And they served dinner at midnight, which three of the kids were still awake for, and then they turn down the cabin lights and everyone on board went to sleep. I got 6 hours of horrible sleep, and everyone else seemed to do fairly well with their sleep. I woke up while we were flying over Christmas Island, but because it was the middle of the night, I didn’t see anything. I slept a bit while we flew over summer and Fiji, and then most of all of us were up and just watching movies on our little screens. The flying was easy. Like, the easiest part of it all.

while I had been excited about all the knitting I was going to accomplish on our big, long plane flight, I ended up knitting and sewing nothing at all. I was simply too exhausted. I guess with the swimming, the full day at Disneyland, I’m a general all-around poor sleep, I just didn’t have anything left over to concentrate. It felt like work to pay attention enough to understand a movie.

once we landed in Sydney, it was a mad rush to get to our connecting flight to Brisbane. We had two hours to make the switch, which included picking up our ten suitcases, taking it all through customs, checking the 10 suitcases into domestic flights, and then taking a bus to our departure gate on the other side of the airport. You know, while towing four crazy children. We made it to the gate about a minute before they started boarding the plane.

we then flew from Sydney to Brisbane, and then later took another flight from Brisbane to Bundaberg. the Bundaberg Airport is tiny. It’s just one conveyor belt for all the luggage, housed in the same room as the ticket counters. Michaels company’s office is at the airport, so our car was ready for us and a couple of people from his work walked across the street to greet us when we arrived. After the enormity of everywhere else we had been, it was so odd to be in such a small place. We loaded up our baggage, some in our people mover, which is what Australians call minivans, and the majority of it on a workmates flatbed pickup truck, and then we set off for our temporary home, driving on the left side of the road, which makes me think we’re going to die at any given moment.

and so we’re here. We will live at our current house for one more week, and then we will move into the house we will be staying in until our departure in December. The ocean is one block away, and we tried to walk down there at least once a day to enjoy the waves and the sand. The kids are loving it all! It is quite beautiful, the birds make very different cause here, the wind blows through the palm fronds, and the sunshine is warm and delightful.we’ve had only a few days here but already I love it quite a bit. Hopefully I can figure out a better way to update the blog, as this way has taken me far longer than I would like to admit. Until then, I am updating and posting to my Instagram account usually a couple times a day. Unless I can find another way to make this work better, that may be the route I choose to go with Laur while we are here. I hope your summers stateside are going well, and hopefully I can resolve this ancient internet issue quickly.

While I Lounge, Exhausted

1 Comment
We flew out of Salt Lake yesterday, and the kids loved the airplane ride!   There’s a video of Bluebird and Penguin during take-off that I’ll have to post later because they were so stinking cute.  Everything went really smooth in regards to our travels.


Highlights include:

1. Monkeyboy flirting with his Japanese female seat neighbor for the duration of the flight.
2. Junebug asking her Latino seat neighbor why he wasn’t speaking English…when he actually was.
3. Junebug watching “Toy Story” with the aforementioned middle-aged Latino man, and the two of them laughing at the same places together.
4. Bluebird watching “Frozen” with headphones on, and belting out “Let It Go” for a few bars before Michael and I could catch her attention and remind her that she was sitting in a crowded airplane.
5. Penguin’s smile throughout the entire trip. Goodness, she enjoyed everything.
Waiting for our shuttle at LAX.
We spent today exploring the area around our hotel. We’re taking a few days to enjoy the Los Angeles area before our departure from the northern hemisphere.

The kids’ one big wish: swim in the hotel swimming pool. I’m happy to report that Michael and I fulfilled their great wish this afternoon.
Highlights include:
1. Monkeyboy flinging himself into the deep end of the pool, trying to get Michael’s attention. Me yelling Michael’s name across the pool so that he’d turn around and see his drowning son.
2. Penguin has the beginnings of some diving skills–she can do flips and spins off the side of the pool. I have no idea when/where she learned to do any of it.
3. Michael can throw Monkeyboy halfway across the pool. I insist upon being in the vicinity of the boy’s landing spot so I can pluck him off the bottom of the pool. Michael says it’s not needed, as he gets to Monkeyboy before he runs out of air.
4. Bluebird jumped into the pool towards me, but then decided she didn’t want to be by me, so she kicked me in the gut as she swam away. Nice to see you too, daughter.
5. After yelling, “Don’t run!” numerous times to the kids, I pulled off a spectacular slip-and-fall while simply STANDING next to the pool.  Some days I find it questionable that I ever possessed athletic ability.
6. The kids are SO TIRED that Monkeyboy asked if he could sit in my lap during dinner at the restaurant, and after he situated himself he laid his head against my shoulder and fell asleep. We had to carry him back to the hotel, and he didn’t wake up when we changed him into his pajamas.
7. Michael is so sunburned, but only where he wasn’t under water, so he’s got this hilarious sunburn “capelet” going on. He’s currently responding to work emails without his shirt on, and had informed me that, in Australia, minivans are called “people movers.”
And, even though it never occurred to our children to ask for it, tomorrow we’re going to Disneyland. The kids have never been, and Michael and I have only been once each. The kids are SO EXCITED that they put themselves to bed at seven.
Which leads us up to now, with me lounging on my super comfy hotel bed, just being tired and content. The power of the family vacation, especially after packing up six people to move halfway around the world. I’m very grateful for this little “hiccup” in our journey that’s allowing us some “just us” time. It’s been a busy couple of months leading up to this.
Disneyland tomorrow, and THE BIG FLIGHT the next day. We party hard and travel harder, yo.

What I’ve Been Working On, Aside from Packing

4 Comments

Hello dear ones.

I fell victim to a little pre-moving anxiety last week, as showcased by last week’s post.  This week I’m in a far better frame of mind, now that we have visas, plane tickets and hotel reservations for all phases of the big trip.  THANK YOU so much for your “fast visas” prayers–it normally takes at least two weeks to get visas, ours came in less than a week.  Prayer works, period.  Thank you so much.

So yes, this is really going to happen!  I’ve waited for some email to arrive all this time saying, “Sorry, we changed our minds,” and it never materialized.  I’ve now re-focused that worry onto more productive areas, and we’re moving along at a snail’s pace in regards to packing, cleaning, and tying up loose ends.  (FYI–kind of a pain in the neck to get six months’ worth of prescriptions filled at once!)  As evidenced by this darling photo, our luggage arrived yesterday, and the kids found the event rather impressive.  I had a mini heart attack when I opened my door and found it partially blocked by the boxes, but I recovered quickly.  God bless our UPS delivery man…we’ve put him to work these past few weeks!

One of the nice things about all this prep is that I’m having to do a lot of waiting in random offices and other places, which grants me extra time to work on Junebug’s “Star Spangled Diamonds” quilt.  I’ve completed ten full diamond units, which means I’m about 1/7 done with the piecing.

It looks like I started working on this on May 20, so I’ve averaging five a month.  At that rate I should finish piecing this up in August 2015.  Hmm.  Oh well, the time will pass anyway, and I’d like to have a gorgeous quilt mostly pieced next August, rather than nothing.  Then there will be assembly, quilting, binding…I don’t see this particular quilt reaching its finish until January 2016 or thereabouts.  But it will be BEAUTIFUL and totally worth the time.

My knitting mojo has been returning, thank goodness, and I’ve put a little work into a few projects, and started THE project, my “unicorn” project that has kicked my butt three times over the past five years.  I’m going to take it easy, only allow myself a certain number of rows per week, and if it sticks this time, I should finish it up in March.  It’s a teeny little strip of knitting at the moment, so I’ll wait for something more impressive to show you a picture of in the coming weeks.  (I get a little jealous of the full-time crafters sometimes…a full workday to work on creative pursuits?  It’s almost enough to make me think about sending the kids to school…oh, how fun that would be!)

And then there’s the packing, of course.  Always.  🙂

By this time two weeks from now, we should be on the other side of the world.  That is weird to say.

Linking Up:

Wrapping My Head Around WIPs on a Wednesday

1 Comment

I’m moving to Australia in a month, and my main concern is around crafts at the moment.  I guess I just need something else to fixate upon, now that passport applications, check-ups, dentist appointments, and optometrist appointments are complete.  I’m trying to get all my projects to whatever place they need to be before we leave, and I’m just about to the point where the constant reviewing of my plans in my head is starting to cause headaches, so I’m going to write it all down and let that list live somewhere else.

Current Projects:

  1. Junebug’s Star Spangled Diamonds Quilt
  2. Baby Girl Quilt #1:  Meadow
  3. Monkeyboy’s Rocket Age Quilt
  4. Friendship Braid Quilt
  5. Storybook Hexagon Label
  6. Baby Girl Quilt #2:  Pink
  7. Baby Boy Quilt:  Cowboy
  8. Aspen Frost Runner
Priorities:
  1. Storybook Hexagon Label–I always space the quilt label.  Do this immediately before I decide it’s not important anymore.  (I’m a historian at heart, and think there is significant historical importance in regards to labeling quilts.)  The main hold-up on this is buying a fabric pen for writing the information on the label.
  2. Baby Quilts–all three need to be completed and delivered before we leave for Australia.
  3. Rocket Age full blocks need to be assembled before leaving, so I can applique the hexie blossoms to them while we’re away.
  4. IF the above are done, I can finish the Braid Quilt before we leave.  It’s so close to being done, but it’s a random side project that I started working on because I was waiting for supplies for the other quilts.
  5. The Star Spangled Quilt will be pieced completely by hand, and it’s portable–work on this while at softball games, park day, etc.  It’s going to take a loooong time to complete, don’t worry about progress at this moment.
  6. Aspen Frost–this can wait until we come home from Australia.
Schedule:
June 18-21
  1. Piece Meadow top
  2. Bind Penguin’s blankie
  3. Purchase:  Fabric Pen, Meadow backing, Meadow batting, thread, binding fabrics for all three baby quilts, supplementary gift items to include with quilts
  4. Pre-wash fabrics
June 23-28

  1. Piece Meadow backing
  2. Create quilt labels for Storybook, Meadow, Pink, Cowboy.
  3. Applique label to Storybook, Pink & Cowboy; machine stitch label to Meadow
  4. Finish quilting Pink
June 30-July 5
  1. Quilt Meadow
  2. Create binding for all three baby quilts
  3. Purchase gift wrapping supplies for baby quilts
July 7-12
  1. Bind baby quilts
  2. Wrap quilts & ship
  3. Cut foundation papers for Rocket Age quilt (40)
  4. Start piecing Rocket Age blocks
July 14-19
  1. Finish piecing Rocket Age blocks, pack for trip.
  2. Finish piecing Braid strips.  Pack for storage.  Will have to finish when we return.
OK.  It just feels better to write it down and look at everything in a realistic time frame.  Everything was going fine until the baby quilts popped up onto the radar.  (All an issue due to my own misinterpretations of information.)  And now that I’ve posted my intentions, I can also check back in with progress updates, which are fun for me.  Happy Summer of Sewing!