Party and what's next

The SpoolSpinner's Quilting Bee had their holiday party last evening.  There was a beautiful house to meet in, LOT of talk, and way too much food, and the exchange of gifts, and the drawing of new Secret Sister names for next year.

 Here is Adrienne showing the gift quilt she received, perfect for her love of lime green.

And here I am with my Secret Sister, Susan Shantz, showing off the "Magic Forest" quilt.  She says she loves the bright colors, and has a high rod around her living room where she can hang several quilts, which also have black backgrounds so far, and this will go well with them.

I learned from this experience in the last few days, that working with black fabric and black thread is now going to be a PAST experience. I love the contrast, but my eyes just really cannot handle it any more. When I was doing the free-motion quilting, I couldn't tell how to space my work, and I missed several sections altogether.  On sewing the binding down on the front by machine, my last step, I was a little dubious most of the time as to whether I was catching it down.  Way too much tension was created in my neck and shoulders!  So I apologized to Susan for any misses, and told her she was getting my last piece of "black work".

For next year we are going to handle the Secret Sister a little differently.  We each brought five FQs of our own fabric in a Spartan bag [local grocery chain] with our profile information.  Everyone grabbed one, not her own, and is to use these fabrics in next year's holiday gift, more added if we want.

So here are the five FQs I put in my bag -- my favorite combination of Red, Black and White.  I tried to use a combination of various sizes of print design.  I will be greatly interested in what turns up next December!  What do you think you would do with these?

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Next project is not so much fun, but very necessary.  This bed in the sewing room needs to be totally cleared off.

What, you don't see the bed?

Look down in the right corner, there's the corner of the bed frame.  My dad made this frame down in his basement wood shop to surround a daybed and it had room under it for a pull-out additional narrow bed.

This bed needs to be transferred to our basement guest area, so one of the grandchildren will not have to sleep on the floor.  The transfer helper is coming on Monday afternoon, so I have to start figuring out where all this stuff is going and how it is going to be organized.  Plus I need to leave enough space in the room for the bed to be moved, it doesn't break down any more.

Hmm, I think it is only going to be accomplished if I use Fly Lady's method of "15 minutes at a time".

Sara

Gratitudes:

Found lovely red fabric for my black winter coat's new lining
Found a tailor who will do the job for me
Looks like a "free" weekend to slowly get Christmas prepared