Excavating, Sewing and Time Portals

A friend of mine posted on Facebook about an unfinished quilt that she found while 'excavating' her sewing room.  I loved her choice of words and can really relate to the concept.  It especially hit home because we recently had my grandson's first birthday party at our house. I'm sure you are all cocking your heads to one side and saying "huh? what's the connection?"   

Well, a little history will make things a little clearer.  I have three kids, two daughters and a son.  The girls shared the 'big bedroom' growing up, while our son had the 'little bedroom'. Because of they way their birthdays fall, they are all 4 school year's apart in age.   So our oldest daughter graduated from college the same year that daughter #2 graduated high school and our son graduated from 8th grade.  We had a heck of a graduation party that year ;->  Anyway, back to explaining the connection between excavating and birthday parties...

Daughter #1 went straight from college to graduate school in another state and Daughter #2 started college the same month.  All of a sudden, we went from two girls in the big bedroom to no girls in the big bedroom! AN EMPTY ROOM!!! Woohoo!  It immediately became my sewing room. I LOVED it!  Lots of light, lots of room; I was in heaven! 

When Daughter #2 finished her undergraduate degree, she moved home.  And stayed while she went to graduate school. And while she was job hunting.  And after she got a job because the job doesn't pay well enough for her to afford an apartment.  Talk about mixed emotions!  I love having her here. We have really interesting conversations, she helps out around the house, and she house-sits whenever my husband and I travel for his job. But that means that I no longer have a sewing room. <Sigh>  

If you're counting kids and years, you're saying "wait, didn't your son leave for college when your daughter moved home?"  Yes, but. The 'little bedroom' is aptly named. It is so small that the bed, dresser and chest of drawers take up just about all the floor space, and there is no room for anything else.  The big bedroom has lots of floor space, even with the normal bedroom furniture.

The only other room in the house that is 'available' is the dining room.  We usually eat at the breakfast nook, so the dining room is not in use as a dining room very often. So I adopted it as my sewing room.  But on family occasions like Thanksgiving and Christmas (and grandson's first birthday.... see where I am going here?) my sewing room has to transform back to the dining room.  So all the projects-in-process and the ironing board and my sewing machine and the magazines and books and the rulers and notions and doo-dads had to find a new, albeit temporary, home.  Mostly that means in boxes and bags in the basement, but I've been know to squirrel things away in closets and under beds, etc.  Which means that every holiday, I lose at least one project.  

After the birthday party (which was a lot of fun!)  I started to move everything back to the sewing/dining room so I could get back to working on my most recent project.  Darn, where did I put it?  I know that it was in a PERFECTLY LOGICAL place  ;>  So there I was 'excavating'  the basement, and I found the project I lost after Christmas LAST year.  Yay!  But, I still want to work on that quilt I put away (somewhere.....) while I was moving for the birthday party.

I've come to the conclusion that there is a wandering time portal in my house. How else can you explain the solo socks?  Two go in, one comes out.  And the mate only shows up months later.  Or how about that extra canned goods that I bought?  I know I bought them, I know I put them in the right place on the shelf.  But when I try to find them - gone!  But when I'm not looking for them - they are right on the shelf where they belong.  The time portal obviously moves things around in time.  I can't swear to it, but I suspect that some of the towels in my closet belong to the future inhabitants of my house. I don't recall buying them, so that is the only explanation - right? ;->  So my formerly 'current' quilt project became a victim of the time portal. I just hope that it pops up before we decide to move!

Free Online Projects

Is anyone else doing any quilt-a-longs or Block of the Month quilts?  Not the ones where you have to pay for the pattern and/or the fabric, but the free ones that you can find online? 

I collect the patterns for free online Block of the Month quilts.  I've collected A LOT of them.  The earliest ones I have are from 2007 - almost 10 years ago! That is when I started quilting in earnest, and I had all good intentions to make each one of them...someday. 

I checked the flash drive where I store the BOM patterns.  Good grief, I have the patterns for over 60 BOMs!  I didn't manage to collect all the blocks for all of them, so I think that I will delete the incomplete ones.  That will probably still leave me with 45-ish BOM collections.  Am I really going to make all of them? No, I just can't imagine that I will.  Will I still collect them?  LOL, yeah, probably!  

Anyway, I plan to blog about my progress on the three projects that I have decided to do this year - The 365 Block Challenge, The Spendid Sampler and the Aurifil Designer Block of the Month.  Tomorrow I will post a description and links to each of these projects.

I may post once a day or once a week, but I hope you will join me on my journey this year!  We can share our progress (or lack thereof ;>) frustrations, successes, etc.  See you soon!