Excavating

It's been quiet here for a week. But only here, not in my house! There's quite a bit of sorting, excavation and purging happening in our basement. Everything is topsy turvy. I thought that after several weeks of this I would have touched, examined, considered, and made decisions about what to do with this or that, but I have not! My slow progress might be blamed on caring, perhaps too much, about who is getting this stuff. I want to find good homes for my UFOs, patterns, books, magazines, yarns, craft items and such. They must go to places where they'll be valued, used and appreciated. This is a much more time-consuming way to purge oneself of stuff, but it makes me feel a little better.

As I unearth each treasure I find myself shaking my head at younger me asking, "What were you thinking to buy that?" How could I not have foreseen that there's a price to pay for 23 years of living in the same house and accumulating!? Oh, I've given away many things, but there are even more things I've clung to for no sensible reason. "Just in case" never happens. Still, why is it so difficult to simplify? 

In between pondering how one, who doesn't think she hoards, can acquire so much stuff, I have taken snatches of time to ignore the mess and focus on sewing. It's restorative!

These Blogger's BOM blocks are from December. I'm still liking my pink and green combo. My quilt will be called "Strawberry Fizz and Lime Pop." 

I spent a good chunk of time scrounging through a large bin of small pieces so I could cut loose and mindlessly sew 36 funky Ezekiel blocks. In Stitchin' Mission we make them into New Life quilts. I don't bother with precise quarter-inch seams, just sewing a bunch of pieces together until I make a hunk large enough to cut out a 6-1/2" square.

I needed 36 blocks to make a small sashing and cornerstones quilt.

I put it together, quilted and bound in the past week. It's 49" X 49".

Hope Quilters is hosting a Quilt-a-Thon on Friday and Saturday, February 3-4, so we can teach others how to make Ezekiel blocks that we'll sew into 48" square to 50" square quilts that have been requested by Mercy Children's Center, Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, here in Des Moines.

Whenever I make a donation quilt, it's an opportunity to try a new-to-me free-motion quilting design. The idea for this free-hand spiral design comes from Fran-tastic Stitch Witchery. I like it, and it was easy to quilt. No marking needed.

It makes me happy to have made this quilt back from my stash. I used up one whole piece of fabric and some orphan blocks.

For "fun," as I've been writing this blog post, I'm scanning photos on our home printer. After learning that our photos, stored in adhesive photo albums since the mid-70's and 80's, are damaged, we've decided to remove them from the albums and digitize them for safe keeping. With approximately 18 albums that hold about 80-90 photos each, and scanning at 600 dpi at the rate of one minute per photo...  It's taking days to do! Though it will be totally worthwhile in the end - both our kids will get CDs of their own - gosh, I'd way rather be sorting, excavating, purging, sewing! Linda