A Quilting Tale

First, thank you those of you who have written comments recently.  It works!  Second, my new computer is fine; it's operator isn't always as bright as she could be.  I kept on being sent to the "Photographs to Fabric" entry because that's what I had open when I put it in my favorites (how many days has it taken me to figure that out?).  Finally, "Broken China" elicited several comments; the last one was from my brother Davis.  He related how he felt as he stood beside his wife and saw both her pain and the cherished china platters that were broken.  I will share some of that comment with all of you when I have been able to come to terms with it.  It's quite profound and a pain of a different kind.

On a lighter note, most of you know that I delayed getting involved in quilting while I was still teaching because I thought it was something that had to wait until I retired (as though I wasn't allowed to do anything that I might enjoy while working?!).  Two or three years before I retired, I suddenly threw up my hands and thought, "Why ever on earth should I wait?"  You know the story.  Deciding to learn how to do things correctly, I took Karen's Beginning Quilting class, learned a lot, and loved it so much I decided to take another class, and another, and another. 

There was a downside to my new found enthusiasm.  Each class had its own project.  Karen's class stretched over several months so by the end, one had a completed wall hanging.  The subsequent classes were only a day, or maybe two days long.  Projects were started, but the next class was coming.  There was no time to finish each project.  That's what my UFOs are - the result of unbridled enthusiasm.  Recently, I came across one of those UFOs that I really want to finish.  It is from my second class: paper-piecing with Mardi.  Loved the method, loved the project.  All the blocks (only 20 of them) were finished, but the they had not been sewn together.  You can see why:

I hadn't taken any of the paper off, and I had used regular computer paper!  I had tried to sew two of the blocks together, but they were inside out, upside down, and backwards.  I do remember breaking my needle (on my old Singer machine), also.  Last week I finished removing all of the paper and was surprised at how easy it was (unsewing the two blocks wasn't!).  Even so, next time I'm using the paper designed for paper-piecing, and maybe I'll keep going on whatever project that one turns out to be.

Now I've finished sewing all the block together (the photo below shows the project with all but the last row sewed on - and out of focus!) and plan to purchase fabric for the borders before next week.  Naturally there will be some additional work done on this, but at least I'm working on an almost-finished-UFO (which makes it a AFUO!).

"My Mother's Spools"

 I'm so glad I started quilting before I retired; now I have time to finish the projects I started when I was still working!