Eventually. . .

 Just wanted to share some of my progress.  Hand quilting something is really a labor of love. 

 

This week it was hard to motivate myself to work on it.  But I'll finish another row tomorrow and there's only two more to go after that.  

Spring is trying to make an appearance here in this mountain valley.  It will be warm this week, getting up into the 70's but I don't trust that winter is gone.  Even though it's been a mild winter (as Rocky Mountain winters go) I don't think "Old Man Winter" has finished with us. 

 It gets warm enough for the fruit trees to blossom and then it freezes most of them  It happens every year. 

Robin

I sneaked a little project in

 Not much going on here.

I work 5-6 days a week on the quilt on the frames (in the column on the right).  I've been hand quilting it for almost 3 months so far.  It's turning out great.  My fingers and wrists. . . not so much.

I banned myself from the sewing machine for the month of February.  If I'm ever going to catch up quilting the closet full of tops, I'm going to have to stop making them.  (Where's the fun in that?) 

I decided to make a small quilt this month.  Just something I could do a little at a time, no pressure.  And I would only let myself work on it after I had done my daily stint at the quilt frames.

This is what I came up with.

It's from a pattern called "Brown Bird" by Renee Plains that I bought when I first started quilting in the early century. I've been wanting to make this and the pattern has been up on my cork board for the longest time. . . 

 I was going for a more primitive look with browns and neutrals.  I picked from my stash and got busy.

But, it was really ugly, no diluting the truth!  Even my friends, who were trying to be nice, had nothing good to say about it.

So I gave it some brighter colors and now it has an Easter Egg feel to it.  That wasn't my goal but it's appropriate for this time of year.  I'll go with it.  I'll quilt it by machine around the squares and by hand inside of them.  No hurry, I'm still concentrating mainly on the quilt on the frames.

Robin

What I've learned this past year

 I absolutely loved the post on Spiral's blog this morning.  You can just feel the joy in her written word as she describes things coming together after a long long year.

I don't really feel like 2020 was necessarily wasted here at my house.  I feel like I learned a lot about myself.  And I've accepted things about my personality that I've tried to fix or remove in the past.  I'm more focused on the things that are important in the long run.  I've stopped anxiously making my house ready for that unexpected visitor (that never came last year).  It is so freeing - is that a word?

I also accomplished a lot toward organizing my boxes and boxes of family history that I inherited when my mother died 22 years ago.  It was a mammoth project but luckily I had a whole year to devote to it.  I'm in the process of writing a short biography of my mother (just 10 pages) and then I can box it all up for the next generation.  And, they will be in a lot better shape than I was when they go through it because most of the pictures are LABELED.

I have also compiled and transcribed all my journals so they are all in one (well, three) notebook.

The only thing I have left is one box to go through, sort it in 6 piles for my 6 children, and pass it on.

I've tried to use the time to learn, to improve, to be a good companion to my husband.  I'm not perfect, (that's still going to take some work) but I've tried to be better.  I've learned more about him too because we've had the same schedule day after day.  He's still interesting, annoying, and wonderful.

I'm a little anxious to go out into the world again.  I'm an introvert by nature, so going out in crowds has never been one of my favorite things.  But, I think I'll find more things to appreciate, more smiles, more laughter, more freedom, more variety, more hope.  I think I'll even cherish the sad, the dirty, the uncomfortable because it means we're together.

What have you learned this past year while you had to stay home?

Robin

As I went through my pictures from last year to find a few to put in this post. . . they are almost all just quilting pictures.  There are not very many pictures of people, 5 maybe.  I think that's really telling of what the year was like.