All Through the House

As mentioned in “I Must be Crazy”, I generally complete one quilt project before starting another but right now I have four going on at the same time. In addition my quilting daughter and I are discussing a joint endeavor for a friend. I have to say that having so many works in progress going on at once is leaving me frazzled and a little obsessed about getting something done.

Part of the problem is that Thanksgiving is now less than one week away and while I am frantically working on my quilts nothing else is getting done. The laundry sits unfolded, our dust bunnies have become family pets and you can write your name in the dust on the furniture. In addition, these projects having taking over the entire house!

Upstairs, there are two guest rooms. You would think that since I only need one of them for Thanksgiving that I would be able to confine my work into one room. Not so! In the one room, the bed has yet to be made ready but for the time being it is pushed against the wall so that the quilt frame bearing the “Friendship Twist” quilt can be fully opened. This is my immediate concern. With less than a week to go, I have only the final border to be quilted so it is possible that I can get it off the quilt frame. I am quilting like crazy and my old shoulder injury is bothering me, either from the quilting angle of the frame, repetitive motion or just a flare up but I dare not stop or see a doctor about it now. What if he tells me I have to stop quilting!!!!

In the second guest room I have the Autumn Star quilt lying on the floor with a possible border layout. Of course I am using the block choice that requires bringing the point into the border which means I do not have enough of that material. I have one strip of green left 24 inches long and 3.5 inches wide, not enough to make the points. Fortunately, my daughter has found a one yard wide back of the green, so after pre-treating and washing it I can move forward. This brings us to the third room in the house.

The mudroom includes our laundry area and my ironing board. At the moment, not only is the green fabric sitting on the ironing board waiting to be pressed but so is the extra yellow fabric for the donation dinosaur quilt. While gathering fabrics from my stash for this donation blanket, I discovered that I do not have enough of the yellow to make it. The dinosaur print, brown, yellow, white print and the yellow fabric had been given to me as a gift, so the best I could do was run to my local shop and match the yellow as close as possible.

The dining table holds my nightstand mat project. It is in the hand quilting stage and is small enough to place somewhere else. One of the bedrooms, perhaps? It sits there because the double doors out to the patio provided me with enough light to sew after a nor’easter came through knocking out power for 4 days. Easy enough to move, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

And finally, the dinosaur project. As I get older I find it difficult on my back to spend long periods of time cutting and laying out projects on our dining table. Then there is the laying out and basting part of the work while kneeling on a hard wood floor. Not only is this hard on the knees but after a short period of time it is difficult getting up off the floor. My husband has just completed a cutting table that is big enough both for cutting and laying out projects. This table sits in the loft above the garage, so yes I have taken over part of the garage too (my husband draws the line at the basement and his kitchen). This is where all the fabric for the dinosaur quilt is hanging out at the moment waiting for me to get around to cutting the yellow fabric, as well as the green for the Autumn Star quilt.

So, less that one week to Thanksgiving and quilt projects are all over the house. I wonder if my guests would mind if I handed them dust cloths and a dust mop when they walk through the door.