All the 2023 Quilty Finishes {Finally!} & A Little Bramble Blooms Progress

 A belated look-back at all the 2023 finishes here at Quilty Folk! Once again, life has gotten in the way of my quilty forward progress. What a shock and surprise, right? I must be human.

2023 Finishes--A

It was a very slow year for quilt finishes, coming in at 10 quilt total. Considering all that went on last year though, I feel like it was an amazing feat. 

2023 Finishes--B

Since I'm throwing this up on the blog for my own benefit, it's probably best to keep it brief.

The 2023 Finished Quilt Details:

• 3 Baby Quilts
• 1 Lap sized Quilt
• 6 Bed sized Quilts
• 9 Quilts totally Hand Quilted
• 1 Quilt mixed Hand and Machine Quilted

As a note of interest, I gifted 12 quilts last year, which is more than I finished. Hmm... You'd think the stacks would be smaller by now? But no. That's not how it seems to work. Gifting quilts is really good for the soul and making friends though, so I guess I'm fine with that! Another item of note is that the quilt top drawers are getting easier to shut. By the end of 2023, there was only 20 tops left and 2 of them were donations from my sister a few years ago. Not really something that I'm stressing about ever finishing if you want to know the truth of it. Like I've mentioned before, they will probably end up as quilt backing some day. I'm just not that invested in them!

Another interesting thing is that I finished quite a few larger quilts last year. With lots and lots of hand quilting. Even if hardly anything else got done, I still managed some hoop time. That's NOT been the case this year. My hand quilting time has dropped to just a couple evenings a week the last couple months. So many things are getting in the way of my quality hoop time. Just drives me crazy, but what do you do? 

Just for the record and journaling purposes: I started out 2023 sicker than I've even been and of course that took awhile to power through and catch up from. Then we had our youngest sons wedding at the end of April. Our oldest daughter had her first child in August and somewhere in the middle was two wedding weekends for a niece and nephew who we feel quite close to. Lots of family shenanigans to attend to as well.

Unfortunately, the year also ended with my husband being sicker than he's ever been and now, somehow we're already in February of 2024. Whew. I'm still right smack in the middle of caretaking, which is not nearly as fun as quilting. We are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and feel thankful for any improvements as they are all quite hard won. Thank you all once again for your many messages of love and encouragement in this hard time. Priorities definitely ebb and flow throughout our lives don't they?

Moving along

Starting the Bramble Blooms QAL seemed like an exciting adventure back when the momentum was carrying me along with the inspiration and initial drive. Now, it's one of the few quilty things that I can think about without feeling completely overwhelmed and uninspired. Most days. Maybe just a little bit blank around the edges of my brain sometimes? Or panic that I might be letting you down? Uggh. There's so much to appreciate though: Using up the Oldy moldy fabric, an easy-peasy medallion quilt plan of attack, Improv-ish, open-ended, loosey-goosey style? Nothing to fret about or bother getting overly excited about, right? Except for the issue of time.*sigh

So yeah. Time is definitely problematic these days. Both for finding enough time in the day to do the applique work and then the computer time for posting. Wowsers, has that been a tough one! I keep telling myself that I did in fact warn everyone about the slower pace of this QAL. It's either bag the whole project or just keep plugging away at it and find the joy where it comes. You know me. Gonna keep after it until the challenge runs cold.

The picture above is the current state of my BBI. Both the top and bottom borders have been stitched down and all that is left for stitching on the side panels is the leaves. I have them pinned where they will probably stay. Still deliberating whether or not to remove a leaf or two from the top and bottom border and thinking yeah. Might as well leave them alone now. Afterall, it's extra work to take them off! 

Also, I keep making these flaky little mistakes {so surprising considering my state of distraction these days}. Right now the quarter triangle corner blocks are just a wee bit too small for seamlessly sewing onto the centerpiece. I've already cut the coping border down once, but may have to trim a little more off. Or maybe trim a bit of fabric off of the outside of the applique borders? Regardless, this phase of the quilt is very, very close to being done. 

I don't know about you, but I'm really liking the end result thus far! As per usual, I am a little shocked and dumbfounded by how interesting this older fabric can be made to look. It's nothing new to me as I've had this result before. But it always, always amazes me because in the fabric stack, the whole thing just looked pretty dismal if you know what I mean! 

I managed to squeeze in enough time to scroll though all the blogs and instagram accounts that have been linked up to the QAL. Very exciting work! Many lovely, exciting creations to contemplate and be inspired by! Wish I could be more present on the blogs especially but maybe later. I'm very encouraged by the creativity and courage many of you have displayed in branching out with this strange little QAL.  I'm hoping that if you manage to push through with the details in the first quilt, then my thoughts pertaining to inspiration and the connection to series work will start to coalesce in the 2nd and 3rd. It's a bit of a slog at first I know, but we have to get some foundational work in place before we can begin to build on anything personal.

  

I can't promise any hard and fast date, but my plan is to move directly into action with the next border phase of BBI. There is quite a bit of organization involved so please bear with me. Crossing my fingers I'll have all the details together before the end of February at the very least if not the six weeks I was originally hoping for. Don't be afraid to email me if you have a late start and want to be added to the link list!

Orphan Annie is a Finish and Other Things in the Lineup

 Orphan Annie is a completed quilt top now! So nice to get another one finished up. Still hopeful there will time for another two or three to get knocked off the list before the end of the year.

Orphan Annie all crumpled and cozy looking!

The next picture made the quilt look a little bit washed out. The actual color is more intense like the previous picture. I really love this whimsical quilt with all its imperfections. Somehow this one ended up being so very blue. For some reason I thought it would feel like a green quilt, but nope. Its one hundred percent got the blues!

Loving the mixed print background in 
the blocks

The tulips were cut-outs from behind another quilt {AHIQ Hourglass Tulip}. I just couldn't throw them away. Really interesting to see the flatter looking tulip, all cut out of only two fabrics, made up into something that really shows them off. I just have to smile at making an entire quilt out of a less than wonderful looking tulip shape. Because why not? Don't they deserve a moment to shine too?

Somehow very blendy looking

And then there's the improv. quarter triangle border. It was kind of hard to cut the triangles off at the ends and just let them be. Made for very odd looking corners for sure! Wouldn't change it for anything though as it distinctively comes across as a 'make-do' sort of look and vibe. My all time fave look these days plus it goes very well with the unpretentious look to the tulips.

The whimsical corners!

Next up in the hoop is my 'Positive Thinking' quilt. It's an AHIQ challenge from 2020 involving using old clothes and of course positive thinking. One of my favorite quotes although I'm quite sure the 'willingly' part would not always apply to me in every context of my life!

Next up in the hoop!

I've been dreading doing the hand quilting on this one 'cuz, how to properly stitch the middle of the quilt? But as always, it's merely a case of getting it into the hoop and simply getting started. I tend to make things bigger in my head than reality warrants.

So odd to have flowers without leaves....

I also managed to get Tatterdemalion to a finished quilt top stage.*sigh  All that needed doing was to to sew the last little bits of applique to the middle border.

It's a completed quilt top!

This was one of the faster quilt tops that I have made in years, all of it sewn together in about six weeks or so. I am loving the unusual color palette and the overall moodiness!

The oddities of Tatterdemalion!

Definitely a quilt that is not ever going to take itself seriously. I suppose that's the beauty of starting with orphan blocks, parts and pieces! Absolutely not anything that I would ever have 'designed' if I was sitting down to draw out the details of a brand new quilt project! 

Good use of the orphan bits

Really happy to have found a good place for some of those brownish violet and purple fat quarters that have been piling up in the stash totes too. I can only wish there was enough left to sew the backing together! There's something deeply cozy about a dark backing on a utility quilt like this one.

Can't wait to see this one quilted

QAL details: I've been thinking non-stop about the QAL idea that was thrown out there in the last post. Like I said, the odds were good that I would proceed regardless of interest, but some of the comments definitely got me to thinking about how to move forward. {Thanks for the lovely amount of interest! I am honestly blown away!} How to make it interesting for both beginners and more experienced quilters? Gathering my thoughts and trying to collate them into a semblance of order here. I recognize my hodgepodge way of throwing a quilt together might not make sense to just everybody!

Potential fabric stacks for the QAL

Also, now I'm a little antsy because what if the entire idea bombs and you all end up with hideous quilts? Ughh.  Anyway....  That's the completely compelling thing about making an improv. style quilt right? It's like rooting for the underdog. The outcome could be amazing, but there are no guarantees! All we know is that if the outcome turns out to be wonderful, we'll be even more excited than if we were betting on the sure thing. Or something like that....

So. If you think you might want to do this with me, go ahead and get digging through the stash fabric lurking in the corners of the quilt room. I've come up with these three perfectly normal looking stacks of similar looking fabrics--{you'll want stacks similar to each other, not necessarily to my fabric stacks!} Take a look, nothing stupendous and exciting! Not much in the way of larger yardage either, just a lot of whole and partial fat quarters and the occasional third of a yard.

Don't worry about what you might or might not be lacking till something becomes a real problem moving forward. We'll dig again later if needed! Also, don't worry about coming up with three fabric stacks if you really can't wrap your head around more than one quilt at a time. Or if you want to make three different color palettes instead of the one? Go for it! {I get that not everybody can stomach making three back to back quilts in the same color palette.} The main thing is to try and get a little bit of value change, plenty of various, mixed fabric prints and yeah, yeah, the old adage, lights, darks, mediums, and brights. I really don't recommend stacks of truly hideous fabrics or stuff that makes you feel nauseous. Will try to finish organizing my thoughts and have the start of the QAL ready by the end of the month!

Am still catching up to answering comments, but if you don't have a reply back by the end of this week, then you must be a no-reply commenter. Even if your name is on the comment, if you haven't received a reply from me, then I have zero access to your email address! Loraine Everard, you leave wonderful comments but I can't reach out to you! And there are several more. Apologies for how picky and proprietary Blogger is these days.

Connecting to Creativity

Well, that month went by in a screaming hurry! I ended up spending most all of August with my daughter in Oklahoma. Waiting for her to have her baby and then helping out afterward. So thankful to have the time and opportunity to make it all work out.

The sweet new grandbaby

Meet Miss. Gracelyn May! We just love her so very much. She's a little sweetie and definitely kept us all hopping for the first couple weeks. You know how some babies just take a little more time getting adjusted to the real world. Gotta get the mom and dad trained up properly! The picture below is with Ellie, another one of our {four} granddaughters. She was sooo fascinated with her new little cousin. We loved having her help too!

Lots of love from her older cousin!

Finally made it back home to my tired and grumpy husband. It's the longest I've been away for all of our married life, but he was totally on board with what I thought was needed. He actually survived fairly well and the house wasn't too terrible. Our youngest daughter had kept tabs on that. {If I could add heart emojis here, I would!} Still, I had mountains of laundry to do and some things that needed set to rights. Still do actually, but one thing at a time!

Probably won't be using the scrappy circles after all

I didn't get hardly any quilting done during the month of August {tiniest bit of hand quilting}, so you can only imagine my longing to dive right back into quilting. After a quick perusal of the quilting WIP's list, I decided what was needed most was something completely carefree. 

Working on the centerpiece

On impulse, I grabbed a bag of orphan blocks, bits and bobs that I had grouped together a couple months ago. The entire bag was thrown together based on color compatibility and not much else. Basically, I just started throwing things on the wall, moving things around until there was some good energy.

Top and bottom border sewn on, working on the sides

Then I started figuring out how to sew it together! First the middle improv. strips went together. Lots of partial piecing and trimming up in order for it to lay flat. Had to introduce one similar-look light tan fabric and then later, a couple darker prints in the border, but otherwise, this entire quilt top is strictly made out of orphaned parts and pieces!

This is the completed background centerpiece minus a 
thin piece of purple I'm gonna add up on the right corner

After the middle part of the quilt was sewn together, then I made an executive decision to trim it to straight. I waffled about that for all of ten minutes or so and then finally flipped the top over and bit the bullet. Why flip it over? Mostly so I didn't have to worry about what was being cut off! ha! Just couldn't face trying to sew the outside borders onto the quilt if I had to do too much easing and coaxing. 

Adding the applique bits that look interesting

Now I'm in a frenzy {a very slow, methodical frenzy} to add leftover applique bits and pieces to the center of the quilt. The whole process has felt amazing. I can't really adequately explain what this has meant to me! Very free spirited and fun just because of the loose, open ended determination for the outcome. It feels like it has woke up my sleeping creativity in just the right sort of way. Not sure what it's supposed to be or do or even end up looking like, but I'm totally okay with that. How about that? We're all good over here in this corner of the quilt world after all!  Maybe by next week I'll have my head above water enough to finally go check out all the blogs I've been neglecting....

All the Baby Quilts

So I got all the baby quilts done this week, labels and all! It felt really good to get these checked off the list.

Prickly Pears is done!

The first one is Prickly Pears, the baby girl quilt. It's made out of the cut-out pears from behind another quilt I made.

Loving the floral

You might think the gray pears are odd, but I really, really like it! I tried to use brighter, bolder prints for some of these blocks, even if they almost clashed. It ended up with a good cozy vibe and the backing fabric will hopefully make my daughter smile!

Who wouldn't want bikes on the back?

The second baby quilt finish is the Improv. Log Cabin quilt. The strips were not cut straight or measured at all. 

Improv. Log Cabin is done and dusted!

And in fact, the center Monkey Wrench block was improv. as well and never straightened.

Always a fan of Log Cabin quilts

If the quilt seems a little bit 'off' then that is why! Nothing to be ashamed of though, it just adds character. I did end up snipping a tiny hole in the backing fabric when pinning the quilt though. Just cutting a thread and missed and cut into the quilt.*sigh

How bout the dark backing fabric?

Thankfully, my daughter doesn't mind patches on things. Uggh. So annoying. The third baby quilt is made out of leftover blocks that have been languishing in the orphan bit totes.

Wish Upon a Star

It has a much softer look and feel, but it holds its own with the others just fine.

It's finished!

This one is being gifted to a long time friend of ours for her second baby. I rarely make or gift baby quilts to anyone other than family because our family is so very large. Well that, and I prefer making my big 'ol creative adventure quilts more.

The backing helps add to the baby feel

The backing fabric is a soft, babyish star fabric. Except that it had a surprisingly tough weave and was not the easiest to hand quilt. Got it done though! Yay!!

Hanging sleeves for the quilt show

I've also been working to get hanging sleeves on a couple of quilts. Not something that I particularly enjoy, but it needed to be done....

The Mountains Are Calling in the hoop

And last but not least, I've finally dove into the hand quilting part of the wedding quilt for my youngest son and his new wife. It's more a 'guy' quilt and I'm crossing my fingers the new DIL won't mind too much! {I plan on giving her a girly looking quilt later on.} Feels good to get this much of the freehand Baptist fan quilting accomplished. I'm loving the texture already! No marking whatsoever here.

Ok, that's it for now! We're just barreling through summer with hardly any time to breathe. Gotta get back to the to-do list and check a few other things off the list that aren't quilty related...

Odds and Ends

I'm slowly getting a little bit of quilting done on Bullseye Medallion. I say 'slowly', because it seems like I've been skipping every other night lately. Oh well. At least there's something happening with it even if it doesn't look like much!

Hand quilting Bullseye Medallion

It's a long story, but the short version is that I got totally distracted by a squirrel last week. It started out with a mad dash through the orphaned/abandoned blocks totes and ended up being eleven doll quilts. 

Little doll quilts

These simple little orphan quilts were gifted during an annual harvest party {for the women in our church} early this week. The older women were having a lap quilt/throw exchange and I decided the littles needed something so they could have fun too. It made a couple of the girls sooo happy!

An opportunity to use up the elephant, kitty and bunny fabrics.

I ended up bringing three back home with me, so yay! One of my granddaughters will have doll quilts for the Cabbage Patch dolly pack I bought for her Christmas. The best part of the whole, three day funfest of making, was that I used up over 700" of leftover binding! Wallah! That tote closes ever so much better now....

Plowed through a lot of short pieces of binding

While that crazy squirrel idea was fun and a tiny bit gratifying, the underlying point was that I was definitely avoiding getting busy on the latest baby quilt..... Not that I'm dreading it you understand. 

Hst's for the wrench blocks

It's more that when a project suddenly becomes a 'have to', then sometimes I get a little stubborn about wanting to. Which didn't last long and next thing I knew, I was knee deep in marking, chain stitching, joining together the wrench blocks, and just generally doing what I was supposed to be doing all along. Just a short little journey until all the blocks got finished up, sewn together in {hopefully} proper color balanced rows, and thrown up on the wall for one last look-see.

I probably should have changed out the color in the centers

I folded over the top and bottom of the quilt thinking that would be preferable to making the side and top/bottom borders different widths. Just chop it off and have a nice, easy border fix. Nah. I could tell immediately what a horrible idea that was.

Applique prep is coming together

Today I finally quit fiddling around with different ideas and what-ifs and just made myself pick something. Anything. My daughter-in-law had laughingly said that if this baby turned out to be a girl, the quilt would need flowers all over it. Okay then. We'll at least put them on the borders! 

The side borders are 5" wide, so I decided to put larger flowers there. After a quick search through the applique parts and pieces tote, I started with one leftover tulip and a long length of potential vine. That gave me a starting place, but I wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea of tulips for ALL of the side flowers.  I really don't know why that look doesn't appeal to me for this particular quilt? It was a simple matter to grab some fabrics and cut out some very basic flowers to audition. And just that easily, I was satisfied.*sigh  Where's the manual? You'd think I could learn to fast forward past the fiddling and dinking around after all of these years....

The top/bottom borders will probably be lollipop flowers made with more of that vine length and whichever of the coral fabrics that look the best. I'm 99% sure that's the plan and yes, the vine is cut and ready to go. Gonna have to get the side borders all stitched down before I totally commit though. You just never know for sure how your brain envisions something and the reality of seeing it in right in front of your face! Right? I'm already feeling the buzz of pleasure that tells me I'm probably on the right track for making a sweet, but not too sappy little girls quilt. Lets hope the hand work goes along well as I need this quilt done by Thanksgiving weekend!

'Cuz Applique Never Gets Boring

Here I go, once again. trying to gain some ground on all the applique that seems to have exploded around here. Coronacrazy is the most recent one to get some love. My plan of attack was to stitch the underside of every single arch, and then decide how to move forward from there. The stitching does gets fairly tedious, but I've found it's an excellent project for working on while visiting.

Coronacrazy Quilt

I was approximately 2 1/2 arches from that part being fulfilled when I impulsively decided to drag the quilt back into the quilt room and do a little auditioning. If you've followed me for very long at all, you would know that I have a couple small totes of applique parts and pieces. These are the orphaned bits from previous projects, along with anything cut out of the scrap bin 'in the moment' {but then deemed undesirable because of imperfect fabric color match, size etc.}. I keep it all for future use of course. Saves me boatloads of time and generally provides a great starting place!

At first I was looking through the totes for auditioning purposes, not paying attention to good color matches in regard to this specific project!  A funny thing happened when I started laying random pieces onto the background. I started falling in love with the unexpected-ness of having a total mismatch in applique shapes across the quilt. It feels so folky and old fashioned! Very make-do, which of course is my sweet spot. It's terribly hard for me to plan this level of mismatch out beforehand though. You have to understand that I generally adore the look, but my brain just doesn't seem to allow for this much planned chaos if/when I'm in the middle of actual designing, planning out MY quilts. It's just not logical enough!

Obviously there are some similarities to many of the elements as I definitely have a preference for tulip shapes and, what are they called? Lollypop flowers? So that helps a lot. Those repeats are probably the key to getting the uncertainty boosted over the hump of feeling like the entire idea is positively doomed to failure. What? You honestly think that I don't feel all the doom and gloom and apprehension that many of you regularly experience too? The difference, as we all know, is that certain moment when the excitement generated becomes so much more than we should ever possibly ignore! I like to think of it as the cumulative affect of years of experience in 'playing'. Serious, intentional, purposeful PLAY TIME. The urge is louder and surely more recognizable for all the times you actually do dare to pay attention! Ignore this only if your purpose in life is to turn out dreadfully boring quilts.*wink

Playing with the applique bits and pieces....

So now the question is, how many of these flowers will actually need stems? If I place a green stem on every single flower, then this busy, busy quilt gets almost psychedelic looking! Hhmm... So many things to consider! For now I had to take everything off just to finish up those last couple arches. I really don't plan very well! Next I intend to stitch smaller circles onto the larger circles until I have a good little stack of lollypop flowers ready to go. There's also a decent amount of the brighter green bias that could probably work very well for this quilt, but first, some of it needs sewed to a more narrow width. And I'll probably make more just to have it on hand. Potentially {hopefully?} help the creativity flow better when it's time to play again? Even if the answer proves elusive for the time being, it's amazing what the mind comes up when the subconscious has plenty of time to whir through the details far, far away in the background. 

Seeing progress on Spring Flowers!

These circles were supposed to wait until other things were stitched, but my typical carrot and stick approach sadly failed this time. Totally crashed and burned actually! I know the colors look very uninspiring in the pictures, but do not be deceived, they are so very yummy to work with!

Trying to draw the templates for the leaves

I just love a serene look/feel project every once in awhile, and these Spring Flowers totally fit the bill! The circles went together so fast that I went ahead and planned out the background fabric and got the stem and leaf configuration decided on too. All is cut out, the bias stem is sewn and cut to approx. length and the leaves are just waiting for proper motivation. For those, I went digging through the scrap bin and found a bunch of blue/green fabrics that should work well. So fun to find scrap fabrics for the littlest pieces of applique work. Some of those fabrics have a very sentimental value and it's always lovely to use up the last tiny bits!

Finally getting these blocks finished up!

Only four blocks needed for the 4-Block Tulip Medallion, but they proved difficult to work on. Just couldn't quite ever muster up the energy to make much progress, until finally, it happened. So simple, but so difficult. There's always a tipping point where it makes more sense to knuckle down and work your way through, than to keep procrastinating for a better day! Now I can start addressing the sashing work that I intend to do between and around these blocks. It's going to be small, pieced tumbler shapes and I've already got the fabric lined out. Still not 100% convinced that I've chosen the best colors, but that will sort itself out with one more session of 'auditioning', something that I'm very attached to. Ha. Like that's not readily apparent! You will never know how many times I change my mind at the very last minute and ultimately decide that everything previously decided is utter rubbish! It's a wonder anything ever gets started, much less finished around here....

One of the inspiration pages on my calendar!

I've also spent about four hours this past week on fixing a bridesmaid dress for one of my daughters. So lovely to work on slippery polyester fabric, NOT! It's only because I love her very much and don't want her to spend another dime on this wedding. Wowsers! What with the bridal shower, the drive to another state, motel costs, food, dress, shoes & undergarments, bridal party mani-pedi session, time off work, etc, etc, etc, this is getting exorbitant! Is it just me, or is this 'honor' becoming more and more elaborate and/or expensive throughout the years? I don't recall asking any of my bridesmaids to cough up quite so much denero, you know... 30 years ago? lol  And this isn't even a destination wedding!

Crossing My Fingers New Blogger Cooperates

So pleased with the way this little quilt finished up. Wowsers! Why don't I just give up and make improv. orphan block quilts all of the time? Somehow this ended up being such a joyful, unpretentious little quilt, all quite by happy accident. Maybe because I didn't sweat the details?

Finished quilt!

Hmm.. Just one little problem. Gotta have the leftover bits and pieces around in the first place! This project was thrown together last March really as an exercise in escapism. Ha! What did I know then? I really, really hope you've been saving all your orphan bits too. You just never know when they'll be most needed!

Love all the texture

Adding the applique was done kind of on a whim {a very compelling whim?}, but it serves a good purpose here. Upping the 'oomph' in the overall messaging is never a bad idea. If you even have a message. It's perfectly okay not to.*wink  I know a lot of you grimace a little at needle turn applique, but I can't even imagine my quilting adventures without having the option. It's not nearly as scary as some people make it out to be. Like everything else, it DOES get a lot easier with experience. Promise!

Love the applique additions...

Though I'm mostly just using this quilt as the excuse for trying out the New Blogger today, I have to smile at this quilt message. So timely. I am many, many things, but good at computer techy stuff, I am most emphatically not. Ugghh.. Hate having to deal with change in this arena of life.

Good place for these leftover wordss!

I did not enjoy hand quilting the area around the letters. So many seams! But it's done now. Thankful I didn't try to do anything more complicated there. Oh, who are we kidding? Do I ever do anything complicated in regards to hand quilting?

Loving the washed and crinkly goodness.

Not so much. When I finally get the quilting hoop arranged in my lap, all I want to do is relax into the quilt. Stitch, stitch, stitch and it's like magic. If people aren't playing weird little videos on their phones in the same room {just saying!}, my troubles can just drift away. I guess we all have our ways! I'm sure the videos are much more interesting with context. Hmm.. Yeah. Pretty sure.... Have you ever thought about implementing a noise curfew in your own living room of an evening? 

Two good pieces of news for today. Our county was approved to move forward to phase #2. Finally! Minimum of 3 weeks between phases here in our state, so its still gonna be the end of July till anything resembling 'before'. And after a stressful day yesterday, {my youngest daughter had to be tested for Coronavirus along with a group of co-workers} we found out we don't have to quarantine for two weeks after all!*sigh  And Yay!? I was about to run screaming from the house and everybody I know. So, so grumpy these days without my second handing, library and quilting store fixes especially. Can't wait till this whole 2020 health issue/state lock down is firmly in the rear view mirror. Now if I can just avoid the news long enough to truly relax and unwind.... More quilting please! But no, need to go to the bank and do some grocery shopping. It's still a jungle out there.