Lists

Dear Judith

Yes, it's me, breaking in to the blog and putting in my two pennies worth. Surprised?

That lovely conversation we had last week really inspired me to take a long, hard look at my quilting projects. Over the course of a couple of evenings I hauled the quilting stash out of the cupboard where it's been languishing since we moved in January and appraised the situation.

There were 7 UFOs - plus an entire half-quilted sampler quilt I can't find - this one:


which is a bit of a bother.

Actually now I only have 6 UFOs. I sucked it up and sewed the binding on my queen size scrap quilt. Now all we need is a sunny weekend so I can wash and dry it and Bob's Your Uncle (or more appropriately David and Mandella will be nice and cosy - it's only taken me 16 years to finish a quilt for our bed!). Well as it's raining that soft, really wet rain that's good for the garden and looks set for the day, the quilt won't get its bath today, so I won't post a picture of it yet.

What I will show you are a couple more of those UFOs. The first is a bargello quilt I stated to make at a workshop last year. It'll be my second bargello, but gosh, is it fiddly. You end up with each strip made up of lots of mini-strips which have to be joined together into one long length and then joined to the whole. This process involves lots of trips to the sewing machine sometimes just to sew a ½" seam. That's probably why the quilt is a UFO and wrapped up in a sheet like an Egyptian Mummy.


Then there's my so-called "take along" project, a hand pieced tumbling block star that I started in America back in 2007:

The problem is that so far it's never been taken anywhere else. If I get the urge to pick up something to do in front of the TV it's usually knitting, not sewing. Working anything by hand also isn't fast enough to satisfy my impatience. That said, these blocks are pretty, and a good way of using up my enormous pile of depression-era reproductions, so I will try and persist.

Making the list made me remember that life is so frenetic at the moment that lists are a really good idea!

I'm sorry about your Mum's sad anniversary. My Dad passed away in 2001 and this year my Mum went out with friends to the venue where they held their wedding reception back in 1960. When we set to and really thought about it, no-one who was at the celebrations that day would be there, most of them sadly long gone, so Mum was going to be the keeper of the memory. We decided that rather than it being a sad occasion the best way for her to mark it was to find a quiet spot and just sit and reminisce for a few minutes, remembering the events of the day that took place in that spot nearly 60 years ago and expecting that some happy echoes of the past would return for her.

And on that philosophical note, I will now go and get on with my rainy day. Have a great weekend.