Keeping Busy

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by everything on my schedule lately. It's a good thing I'm a list maker and my daughter likes to keep the family calender updated. Otherwise there would definitely be things falling through the cracks around here! We're about to burst full speed into summer and my youngest daughter finally got word that she has a job waiting for her after school gets out.

Mending because I have to....

What this means for me is helping her to find an appropriate black shirt to wear for the hostessing and bus boy (girl) position. Yesterday I was playing hooky from my book work and digging around in a second hand store. You know, looking for things to make the $1-a-bag-sale seem worthwhile! Anyway, I found a long sleeve black shirt that I thought might work until we can find her a nicer cotton one. Of course, she wasn't happy with the thought of pushing up her sleeves, so I reluctantly agreed to cut the sleeves off and move the cuffs up to elbow-length. Ugghh... Mending is not my favorite thing to do, but it was actually a fairly straightforward process and went smoothly considering that I do as little of that as I can get away with. The only glitch was when I forgot to switch from the zigzag stitch back to a straight stitch on the second sleeve. lol Good thing I have a seam ripper.

Since I was already in the quilting room, it was a simple matter to prep for the applique I intend to do on my Geese Tracks and Baskets quilt. It's all a bit dark and moody looking right now, but I'm hoping it will pull together and look funky and maybe a bit vintage and/or retro? in the end. So hard to tell when I'm right smack in the middle of figuring it out.

Prep work for the Geese Tracks & Baskets quilt

I'm also trying to hand quilt on my Broken Dishes Part Deux quilt every chance I get. It's going very quickly and as you can see, I'm currently working on the borders. Amazing how much difference it makes to get the sashing taken care of beforehand with the machine quilting. It's not a look I want to do for every quilt, but I think it suits this one very well. Please agree with me or say nothing. This is really, really not the time to be bursting my little bubble.*wink

Hand quilting on Broken Dishes Part Deux

And since the end is almost in sight for my Broken Dishes quilt, I decided to get a jump start on the binding. At the very least I wanted to know if I had any fabric in my stash that might work or if I needed to squeeze in a trip to the quilt store. That could be dangerous with my present state of mind! 

Binding all ready to go..

But alas, no need to go hunting the perfect binding fabric, I had a black/white print that will do just fine here at home. Now if I could just find the perfect outfit to wear to my daughters senior graduation next weekend. Guys have it so easy. Throw on a pair of dark jeans or khaki's and a nice button up and they're done. Me? I have to figure out something that doesn't make me sweat too much (that layered look I love), look like I'm trying too hard (no one is more proud of my daughter than me, but it is high school and we all know they're wearing shorts under those gowns) or my favorite, something that is age appropriate (skimpy little sun dresses are definitely out for this mom body). I'll tell you this, deciding what to wear for her Kindergarten graduation was much, much simpler.