For some people staying inside can be incredibly hard, they need to be out meeting people. These people get their energy from being around other people.

I don’t happen to be one of those people. I really enjoy my time alone so staying inside in quiet introspection is not hard for me.

The other thing is my health, I had come down with a nasty cold which turned into the flu last week. Sigh just when I was starting to feel better. No, it’s not the “virus” as I talked to my doctor and currently, there is a bad cold (yup), two strains of flu and well as COVID-19 going around. Hopefully, with everyone staying indoors that will flatten both the cold, flu and “virus” curves all at the same time.

Meanwhile, I will stay in and get healthy!

Watching TV

Two things I gave up when moving into my new home 5 years ago now was cable tv and a landline telephone. I haven’t missed either one. I do have Netflix and I recently subscribed to Acorn TV.

Lately, Netflix has put on a lot of older movies which I really appreciated while I was not feeling well. I could revisit old favourite romantic comedies which I haven’t watched in awhile. You know I am not feeling well if I am laying on the couch watching TV as that is something that rarely happens. The TV can sit there idle for weeks. Poor thing probably gets lonely it gets used so infrequently.

As for the Acorn TV, the one thing I do enjoy is a good murder mystery and the brits do that the best, so I can get my fill of British murder mysteries on that subscription. Only thing is as I don’t watch that much TV it can take weeks to go through one new series.

Quilting in Stay at Home Order

If you’re a quilter like me then that means more time to quilt! Yeah! So many platforms have free webinars and classes right now, so it is a great time to learn new things if you are into that.

Last year I was determined to get all of my unfinished projects finished and also all of my quilt kits that were sitting around. I had made a really good indent into when the “flood” happened and some of my quilting was put on hold. I was able to get my forever hand quilting project finished though. It still hasn’t been quilted but hey, at least it’s a top.  

Years ago, I had purchased a Jinny Beyer striped border print and put it aside not knowing what on earth I was ever going to do with it. While in 2015 Craftsy (remember them) had a free Jinny Beyer block of the month quilt. Of course, it was a different border print, but I thought it would be fun to do the pattern and use the border print I had bought so long ago. Well, it’s been a challenge, that’s for sure as Jinny uses templates, partial seams and all kinds of tricky techniques. That said it’s coming together, and I was mostly able to use my stash except the background fabric.

 

Well, the quilt called for hand applique. Yup, the dreaded hand applique. The very thing I had sworn I would never do again. That quilt stayed in its little project box for 3 months before I took it out and decided to try hand applique again. I cut out all of the pieces for one block and even started and then 6 weeks later, there it sat.

Trouble was, I had promised myself I wouldn’t start any other project until the one I was working on was finished, so NOTHING was getting done, in fact, I was avoiding going in the studio unless I was working on a client quilt.

Well, this is no good! So last week I took it out and looked at it, can I just do fusible applique? The pieces are really small (they were to be flowers in the basket). Would it matter if I just didn’t do the applique at all? So, I finally decided that enough was enough, I don’t mind fusible applique or even hand applique with larger pieces, but small pieces and hand applique are just NOT for me. I don’t care what method is being used.

The baskets are just going to have to be flowerless and I am ok with that. I can tell because as soon as I made that decision, I felt a weight come off my shoulders and once again I am back at it in the quilt studio.

Quilting can be so much like life can’t it? Except in quilting, I could make the decision that I just didn’t want to do it and could move forward. Sometimes in life, we can’t always do that.

So how are things going with you?

Are you getting a lot of quilting done?

Keep moving forward in life!