Friday, March 12, 2021

March Madness

 

Hi! Sorry I have been a stranger, but I am getting ready to downsize/sell my house and that is taking up a lot of my time. It is shocking how much junk you can accumulate in 16 years. I remember when we moved into this house, we had empty rooms--lots of them. Going from a 900 sq. ft house to a 2400 sq. ft house was a big change, but we have managed to fill it up along with the garage. We park two cars in the garage, but it is nearly a three car garage, so it has plenty of storage space. I uncovered things I moved here from California that I have not touched especially many UFO quilting projects. I will be donating them to some local quilting groups--if I haven't made them yet, I probably won't!

My new house is being built and won't be ready until sometime in August. The real estate market in our town is crazy with homes selling in hours--one sold yesterday in two hours! Especially homes that are in my price range. With the help of my friend/realtor, she put me in touch with a builder that was going to be building a spec home in the neighborhood I like the best. It has a new section of lock and leave homes where the snow removal, front/backyard lawn mowing, and irrigation water is included with the HOA dues. It is also very quiet and on the outskirts of town. So now instead of him building a spec home, he is building it for me! I have selected my lot, floorpan, and some of the finishes (I will get to pick them all out eventually and get to pick where the electricity outlets go).  It also includes the landscaping and sprinklers for both the front and back. I have never had a brand new house, so it is fun and exciting to get to participate in all these decisions.

My sewing room is actually going to be bigger than my current room and when I told my builder about my quilting, we decided to put an extra large window in it to help with natural light. We actually added in quite a few windows throughout the house. The whole house will have luxury vinyl plank flooring, so I am excited about being able to roll furniture around in my sewing room. My dad is going to build me a new cutting table on casters to take advantage of it!

The block pictured above is from the February block of the month (BOM), My Favorite Color Is Moda. I am doing the coastal cool color way for my new house. My current house is mostly browns and greens.
For the BOM, they had us do all the cutting ahead of time which makes it much quicker for assembling the blocks. This is block 2--it just reads water to me. There is a pond in my new neighborhood that I am looking forward to walking my dog around.
Here is block 3. I whipped up both of these last night.
I did make 2 more Labyrinth baby quilts in February and I already gifted one of them. Here is the other one!
That makes 4 of them in the same color palette. I bought a fat quarter pack with animal prints and with the help of it and my stash I squeezed out 4 baby quilts!
I quilted this batch more heavily and used gray minky on the backs.
I had today off as an end of the quarter vacation day and to get my second dose of the vaccine! It is hard to believe that a year ago today our school district shutdown and we went into lockdown for the rest of the school year. It is devastating how many lives have been lost to this horrible virus.

Today, I started on these muted pastel rainbow blocks for another work friend. She is due next month, so I need to get cracking. I am using the rainbow block pattern from Bonnie and Camille's Shine On book. I am going to appliqué hearts in the space under the rainbows. We have a big snowstorm on the way, so hopefully I won't get any side effects from my second dose and I can stay in my pjs and get this baby quilt done!