Time to Recap 2019!!

You sure didn't get "the rest of the story" on the blog this year!!!  Sorry about that.  I've been playing Wheel of Fortune - too much - and apparently boycotting the rest of the web!

P and I watched a new series on HBO (via BBC One)  Years and Years!  OMGoodness - it was so good.  Slightly in the future with the same political and earth problems.  It was fascinating and slightly scary!!!  One line got my attention.  Paraphrasing here:  "Remember when the political news was boring??  We used to go to the kitchen and get a snack!!!  Art imitates life!!!!

I taught Hand Embroidery last spring and I loved it!  The samplers turned out modern - just as I wanted them to!  Lots of personality in them.  I thought I would teach it again this fall, bought supplies and everything!!  But By My Hand tightened up their store space and there's no longer a classroom.  Sigh!  Oh well, who knows where I would have found the time!

I feel that I was a slacker this year in the sewing room!  The last of the dog-damaged quilts from Portland were made whole again.  And that sucked up alot of the energy in the room.  I am not mentally equipped to repair badly damaged quilts!!  And the dog-lovers have been warned!  Yes, I still love them, even the 4-footed ones!

My 2019 QOV program was ambitious!  We all worked on Sawtooth Stars and I ran an alternate block raffle each month - so making 17 alternate blocks or begging someone else to do it monthly!  We made more money than we thought we would and we did end up with plenty of quilts for the year.  And although I had my doubts about an 'inbred' selection of quilts ... that didn't happen!

Sometimes you couldn't even tell the same star blocks were in them!!  2020's monthly block is a string block aka StashLab's String star.  I'm loving it and the blocks have been coming in like clockwork.  At our December Open Sew weekend I put the first QOV top together - just to be sure it was working!!  And boy-oh-boy did it!!  Gorgeous!!

So my Finished list - 2019 included:

2 repaired quilts
6 wall or baby quilts
4 QOV quilts!!
5 pillowcases for GKids
10 Fabric Post cards for exchanges
1 Queen sized!!
10 ModSquad monthly projects

Not bad for an off-year!!

Just so you don't think I've slowed down too much ... I attended 6 Quilting retreats!!  Finishing School and Bayshore in Bandon;  Brookings Guild and 3 Amigos in Gold Beach; Sisters Week at Black Butte (2nd year!) and 3 Amigos Beach Bums in Crescent City over Labor Day Weekend!!!

P and I joined and worked on Jen Kingwell's BOM thru QuiltMania.  We were keeping up pretty well until they had the reveal ... and we didn't like it!  Darn!  We're going to change it up a bit - or get used to it!!  And oh, my! we bought a boat-load of her fabrics - probably enough to make 5 of the quilts!!!  Oops!

I read 45 books this year. (if I finish the one I'm reading!)  That number is probably a little soft - I have problems writing down the computer books I've finished!  Something about getting them ready to go back to the library helps me keep track!

Favorites:

The Day the World Came to Town  Jim Defede - The Broadway musical was based on this book.  I loved the characters, the story and how good you felt that even on 9-11 there were people in this world that did good deeds for strangers, against all the hate and fear that was blossoming.

Invisible by Andrew Grant  An Army Intelligence Agent goes undercover at the courthouse to solve a murder.

Relic by Alan Dean Foster  SciFi  The last human in the universe is telling our story

The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose  - Fascinating story of the famous performance artist Marina Abramović, who staged a show in NYC.  She sits quietly at a table and audience members can participate by joining her at the table - no talking, no touching.

The Book Artist by Mark Pryor  A spy novel with so many twists and turns you can't put it down!

Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen  SciFi  Set in San Francisco where a time-traveler gets stranded and has to live invisibly to save the future.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles  Our book club read this.  If I had known that Russian literature could be this charming - I would have read more a long time ago! :-)

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens  Another Book Club - fascinating to the last page!!

The Threadbare Heart by Jennie Nash  The description says '...23 tubs of fabric' and I knew that I'd like the main character already!!

We are experiencing a West Coast Winter Storm!  And I am up way too late!  So I may add photos to this later ... or not!  Here's to 2020 where we will do more of our favorite things and pass on the joy of living to everyone we see!!

It was a little (very crowded with projects) sweat shop this weekend!

But first - we went to Crater Lake this week to meet up with friends from Nebraska.  The last time they had been here was for A&J's wedding - so we took a little show and tell too!!

My time flies fast!!

So happy to be able to meet D&S, they're here visiting new grandsons - yes twins!  They had never been to Crater Lake before and boy were we spoiled by great weather and a gorgeous view.

Now back to our regularly scheduled blog!!  This weekend I had such high hopes!  As always!  I had a list of MUST-DO yesterdays!

Summer postcards for two Stashbuster friends.  I found this adorable fabric last year at the Newport Quilt show and just had to have a little!  It first made it's appearance on a notebook cover, And then by squeezing it sideways and lopping off the toes (they weren't painted anyway!) I fit her in.  I love them! And I was able to fit in the 1/2 woman left in the row!  I love to put a little design on the address side too!

Newport Guild supports Quilts of Valor and we picked up the fabric kits for 4 blocks last meeting.  Of course, I couldn't find mine (if something is missing - look in the computer bag!!!)  So it was the last minute to get them done by TODAY!!!  I'm happy to report they went fast!

The Newport guild organized the Memory Garden BOM in 2013.  N had all the copies made, templates printed on freezer paper ... yep, she's a hard act to follow!!  And may I say, my, time went fast!  We signed a "contract" to display the finished quilt by this year!  I received my "dunning" notice and panicked. These are the blocks - now in a small wall quilt for the Silent Auction at the show.  The project I didn't get done this weekend.  But I wanted you to see the blocks - scroll down and see how I interpreted them!

TA-DA!!  I remembered all the gardens I weeded for my mom or planted myself.  The flowers were all in the blocks - or at least some of them could be changed in color to be the ones I wanted.

I had to add Johnny-jump-ups.  Got them from a coloring page out on the web.

And besides the robin, every garden needs a rabbit to entertain and frustrate you!!  We had "Frick and Frack" in Princeton Jct!!

So, watch out when you so innocently ask, "what did you do this weekend?"  You could be in for an hour long slide show and explanation!!  tee-hee!