Well, the weekend was filled with activities around the house. The weather was rather cloudy and rainy on Saturday so that was helpful. It made it easier for Bud to work in his garage. I joke that I have become a 'Garage Widow'. That is the label that Eva gave me when I sent her a picture. I guess I could have worse complaints. He has been working hard getting it in shape.
You can see that he has finished his back wall with the primed siding boards that were leftover from the outside. It looks very nice and he still has some more to use in the future. They are stored in the rafters. He made several trips to Home Depot this weekend for supplies but the major purchase was the shelving units for the back wall. He assembled them and used leftover wood for the shelves. It looks very nice. He is especially proud of his innovative ways of storing things like the old garbage barrel for all the shovels, rakes and hoes. He hadn't filled it up when I took this picture but it is full now. He also is very proud of the way he decided to store his car top carrier, attaching it to the end of one of the shelves. He went into my garage and took out many of the rakes and such that were hanging on the walls and motorcycle boxes that were blocking the stairway to the back door. I now can get around my garage without fearing that a rake or ax will come tumbling down and hit me or my car. I can also exit the garage up the steps and to the house without going around through the big garage door. I will have to get into the habit of using that door again. It has been blocked for so many years that I forget to use it. I am very happy with the results and Bud is especially happy with his new garage. I joked about him putting a wood stove in the back and heating it but he said NO to that idea. I'm not too sure that our subdivision rules would allow a wood stove and I don't think he wants that great of a workroom just yet. He said that he doesn't have any plans of making furniture like his dad.
I stayed inside and worked on this 'scrappy' quilt. I have been working on it for quite a while but it isn't a quick pattern. It takes a lot of blocks to make this quilt since the darker pieces are 2"x4" and you put 8 of them together to make the 'pinwheel' block. The block is only 8 inches square so it takes a lot of blocks to make this quilt. The good thing about this pattern and this quilt is that I am using up scraps from other projects only bought the white material for this quilt. It has been time consuming but a good project to keep me busy and away from buying more fabric.
While Bud was working in the garage yesterday, I did a little sorting and cleaning in my sewing room. I said that I have been trying to stay away from quilting stores this summer while finishing this quilt but I still have a LOT of fabric in my 'stash'. When I first started quilting I only bought fabric for a project that I was planning to work on. Even when I saw pretty fabric, I passed it by because I didn't have any use for it. After I retired and really got into quilting more, I started going to fabric stores more often and started just picking up a yard or two of something that I liked, hoping that I would find something to go with it and make something beautiful. I found it harder to pass up those pretty pieces of fabric.
WELL, just like all good quilters, I have established a 'stash' of fabric without any projects in mind. The fabric is very pretty but very eclectic. I also have a lot of leftover fabric. When I buy for a project I usually buy a little extra. It is very painful to be in the middle of a project and run out of the fabric you need. This happened to me early on in a project and I had to make a distressed call to a store and pray that they still had some. I was lucky that time but you hear stories from fellow quilters of disasters or maybe that is just what we tell ourselves so that we can buy a little extra. The smaller pieces of just 1/2 yard or 1/4 yard aren't too disturbing, I can always make a scrappy quilt and use them up. So far I have made 3 and they were all pretty big. They made great gifts, one for a wedding gift, one to Penny and the one that I am making now.
What can I say, quilting keeps me busy and out of the bars and casinos. It could be worse, I could be gambling away my money or drinking by noon. I just read and quilt in my retirement.
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