You can believe that it has been a crazy, crazy month.  Before the Covid-19 wrench got tossed into the gear works, we had been looking for a new home. The home didn’t have to be huge, because we aren’t the McMansion family.  It just needed to hold our junk, a few bins of fabric and a place eat, sleep, shower, and repeat.  Okay, we did have one big feature requirement, and that was that it had to have a little over an acre of land to it so that we could enjoy the backyard, put a someday pool in, and maybe a little workshop for (maybe) a longarm for a well deserving household member…I will be looking for a job outside the house to work on one of these dream items, and it probably isn’t the pool.  We closed on our new home last Tuesday, which belonged to a sweet family, with four children.  Being from a larger family myself, I was filled with a sense of comfort when we chose this home, knowing that those walls held so much happiness. Last night we built a fire in the backyard and roasted marshmallows for s’mores, but had to return to our ‘old’ house since our new home isn’t quite ready for habitation.  It’s a process.

As you all know the face covering post that I made over a year ago became very useful to many of you all, and I am so happy that my little free tutorial was put to work on a grand scale. I was overwhelmed at first, because nobody told me that this was going to happen, I was none-the-wiser.  After the news and hospitals began linking my mask tutorial, I spent the first two to three days answering questions and thanking you all for your kindness.  I will try to keep up with further questions and such over the next few weeks, but please be patient, as I will be swimming in moving boxes, construction dust, and paint.

In addition to making masks, during my 15 minute breaks (I use the Pomodoro method for time management), I have been working on these vintage quilt blocks:

I take them apart, trash the fabric that is beyond saving, then I add complimentary fabric. In this case, I needed to re-arrange the blocks from the classic ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ quilt block to one of my favorite go to scrap busters, the ‘Churn Dash’, aka ‘Monkey Wrench’. So far, they look like this:

Maybe when this is done, I will have a pattern for the full quilt. I am currently dreaming up a border idea, as I have already decided on the setting.

I also connected with some fellow hand stitchers in blog land, so I will be posting a little about that soon, hoping that it will force me to meet personal deadlines on my hand quilting, and hand piecing projects.  I am actually pretty excited to plug away at these bins filled with treasures.

Finally, I have been designing blocks for a sew-along series that I want to share with you all.  It will have pieced blocks, some applique (but maybe I will have optional pieced blocks to replace those those of you who aren’t too excited about turning a seam by hand.) Working on that…I can’t wait!

Almost midnight here, so I am closing this, but I will see y’all soon with updates. Let me know what your plans are for this coming week, so that I can hold you to a goal.  Good luck with that structure building.  We all can use a little of that right now.