Here's hoping everyone had enjoyable holidays with family and friends. We enjoyed all the C'mas cards and lovely letters and pictures of families! I tried to keep up but I ran out of cards and was too lazy to go get more so I will be emailing messages to a few people! We had a quiet day with Nate & Deanie and Mark! Lots of good food and leftovers - of course! Tracy called and we chatted for a bit. J.D. is in Phoenix with his mother. He calls and taunts us with weather reports! We hope he's enjoying his visit there, he's due back here on Friday. We've had a couple of days with temps in the high 50's and low 60's - a real treat after the bitter cold.
Mark will have his teen house guests for the week - he's gone to Fort Wayne to meet them and will bring them back here. Tia & Tori have grown up so much since they left; they keep in touch with school friends here and make frequent visits. Mark is so good to them - even takes them shopping!
It's rained a lot here and it's been rather gloomy. Even my big fabric stash didn't tempt me to sew very much. I did make a small wall quilt but can't post a picture of it yet - it's a gift and won't be a surprise if I show it now. So - maybe next week!
Friday I fired myself up and decided to get back to sewing. A few years ago I made the Pioneer Braid quilt shown below and there were a lot of pieces cut in that size so I decided to add more fabrics and started cutting. Saturday morning I cut some more and this morning I began to sew the strips. I have four finished this evening. It is truly a scrappy look quilt but it will keep someone warm.
Often someone will ask me how long it takes to make a quilt. There isn't anyway to know unless you time the entire process. So out of curiosity, I tried to keep track of this one. I estimated 8 hours to dig out the fabric, press it, cut it into strips and then cut to sizes I needed. Today I made the four strips (need a total of ten) and it took about an hour and ten minutes to piece one strip. So - get out your calculators! I'm far from finished and hesitate to begin doing a tally! ! Anyone want to figure it for me?
It will be a quiet week here - I plan to keep working on the quilt. In a few days I'll put away the C'mas decorations - that won't take long tho. The fireplace mantle will stay for a month or so - I love to see my collection of snowmen and Chet likes the lights behind them as his night light! We will also work something out to visit with Tia & Tori and hopefully JD will be able to spend a bit of time in town before he goes back to Bloomington.
Till next time - - take care and keep in touch. . . .