Catching Up

Hi All,

Its been a busy few weeks. I am finally moved back into my office. The ceiling and lights were replaced after the flood, and the movers brought back my file cabinets and desk. I also have a new computer, printer and phone, so for the past week I have been trying to get caught up with work.

Last Saturday I road-tripped to the Machine Quilters Expo (MQX) in Manchester, NH. A very pleasant trip. Took lots of photos for inspiration. I picked up a free-motion quilting foot for my sewing machine, a couple of books, three spools of thread and just a few small pieces of fabric. (See photo above).

I took this Friday off and tried to get to a few things that I just never seem to have time to do. One of them is to figure out Grandma Toth's sewing machine. I wound some bobbins with some new thread and figured out how to thread the machine. It seems to be stitching fine.

Damon (also had the day off) and I ran to Lowe's for supplies and spent several hours in the garden. Damon is putting in supports for the Hop beds we put in this spring and I was adding compost to our regular raised beds. What we ended up with is a bumper crop of new rocks.

The Flood Saga

Here are some photos of my flood experience this week. As you can see from this first photo just about everything on my bookshelves on the back wall of my office got drenched.

As you can see soggy misery loves company. Here are my colleagues Karen, Gordon and Anne, all off us to some degree were affected by water in our offices. This is day one (April first) of the clean up.

I spent a lot of my time sorting through all my wet paperwork and tried to write down all the titles of stuff I will need to get new copies of.

As you can see here, the LIS (Division of Library and Information Services) Disaster Recovery Plan did not survive and will not recover - it too went to the dumpster with all the other soaking wet stuff.

On Friday morning I came in with a bleach solution and wiped everything down and anticipated that I would shortly be putting my office back together. Around 11am our building supervisor notified me that M&O had decided to rip out my ceiling and put in a new one. This meant I had to get everything out of my office by the end of the day. The ceiling replacement process will take 1 - 2 weeks. I am temporarily taking refuge in a library carrel and still need to see about getting my computer data and a phone. I think I will be working at home a bit more in the next few days.

No Fooling - My Office Flooded!!!

Got a bit of a shock today when I got to work - several offices on the 3rd floor of the library had been flooded overnight and my office was one of the worst hit by all the water. Apparently a water pipe from the heating system broke. Water came from the ceiling and 3 of the walls in my office. Almost all the stuff I had on the bookcases on the back wall took on water. I threw a way about 6 large garbage bags of wet files, papers, binders, etc... and there is still more to do tomorrow.
I currently do not have a computer (they said they were able to salvage the data, but I will need a new machine) I also do not have a phone at the moment.
I took some photos and will see about posting them tomorrow.

Practice, Practice, Practice

I love designing, making fabric choices and piecing quilt tops. I even enjoy binding quilts. But the one area that I still find intimidating is the actual quilting of the quilt.

Last summer at the Vermont Quilt Festival I bought two pre-printed mini whole-cloth quilt tops - design specifically to practice quilting. This is the first one. It is only 16x16 inches. I free-motion quilted the middle and used my regular machine foot for the lattice. I used a variety of brightly colored threads so they would show up against the black background. For a first attempt I am pretty pleased with the results.

You can get the pre-printed tops at: http://quiltingstencils.com/.

National Quilting Day

Here is the second card for my Stashbuster's Fabric Postcard swap. We have not yet reached this stage of spring here yet - the grass is still flat and brown, even the weeds really haven't popped up yet. The only insects so far are the ladybugs in the house. I put both postcards in the mail on the 20th. The other postcard is pictured in my last blog post.

As this is officially National Quilting Day I have spent some time in the quilting room. I made another of my New York Beauty blocks. They are quite addictive and I now have 21 blocks. I laid them out to play with the design. I figure once I have 40 or more blocks I with think of starting to put them together. Here is what I have so far.

Spring Quilting Retreat

Attended the spring Wadhams Hall quilting retreat this past weekend. A fabulous time! I took a lot of projects to work on but only finished one - one of my Spring fabric postcard swap cards. (pictured here). I need to make one other postcard for the swap and get both in the mail by the 28th.

I took the fabric for my sister's place mats and did manage to piece the tops for all 6 of them - but I am not posting pictures - no sneak peeks Tammy, you get to see them when they are all done and sent to you. Not sure when that will be yet.

I also worked on my Brown Bag challenge quilt and did manage to finish piecing the top. It is a bit bigger than I initially envisioned it (roughly 60 x 60 inches). This project is an original design of my own - and the first creative quilt project that came out pretty much exactly as I envisioned it so I am thrilled with it. The flowers are paper pieced and the leaves are 'caveman' style curved piecing. The background is crazy pieced and the flowers were appliqued on with a machine blanket stitch.

Almost Spring - Sort -of, Kind-of

Well we had a wonderfully warm weekend - almost 50 degrees. I even took a walk each day without a winter coat and hat and scarf. But winter hasn't given up on us yet - we got about 2 inches of snow on Monday.

Since this fall I have been working on the guilds' Brown Bag challenge (pictured here in its not quite finished state). I came up with the idea of paper-pieced 'flowers' even before I got the fabrics. I have to finish one last flower and then figure out how I want to piece the background which will be in a variety of greens. It fits nicely with the general hope for spring.