Creation of the To Do Quilt List

Dogwood Quilters Quilt Guild has declared 2012 the year to "Get 'er Done." To that end, I am creating a page of UFOs that I need to finish asap. Although I can't get all of them done this year, I have great hopes of finishing many of them. Most just need borders, backs, and quilting.

I was well on my way to working through one of these projects on Saturday morning when I burned out an outlet in my sewing room. It's hard to sew in the dark. Fortunately, I know an electrician who has a full-time job at a factory during the week and does small electrician's jobs at night and on week-ends. Guess who was close by and available! Thank goodness, Jeff had my sewing room relit and working again in less than an hour. I still didn't get my quilt top finished, but I am significantly closer!

Today is my half-day at work. This afternoon, I quilt! Okay, first I have lunch with Mom, feed the chickens, give the kitties their yum, load the dishwasher, water my plants, and gather the laundry. THEN I quilt.

I'm trying to get more of my Ocean Waves patterned quilt finished before our Stash Busters meeting next Thursday. Of course, the cats keep "helping" me cut the fabric (Fabric must be lain on for at least two hours to warm it up before it can be cut.), sew the pieces (Watch the tail!), and iron the blocks (Oh, that warm ironing board feels good on the fur!), so it's taking far longer to get anything done than I had planned. Earlier this week I tried switching to binding my butterfly quilt (picture coming as soon as the binding is on), but I do have four cats. There always seems to be someone free to curl up on the quilt as I'm working on it or to occupy it permenantly if I get up for a moment.

We had a lovely Q.U.I.L.T. meeting last night with one of our own members giving a trunk show. Liz does fabulous work. I also saw Diana there last night. She is the wonderful friend who took on the challenge of teaching an applique hater to actually enjoy applique. She found an African mask pattern for me that I absolutely love. I now have all of the masks made and need to work on the setting so that I can have a wall hanging to show off. I find myself actually looking for new applique patterns now. How embarassing after all I've said over the years about applique...

Today's blog justification thought-

One of my reasons for creating this blog is to explore the connection between on-line social connections and employability. I teach Employability Skills to entry-level, post-secondary students, and I am fascinated by the new evaluative tools being used by prospective employers. I have set myself the goal of learning as much as possible about the pros and cons of developing relationships soley through social media. How do these relationships impact, positively or negatively, on our ability to get new job offers? How do they help our networking capabilities?

So why a quilt blog instead of a professional introspective? Because quilts are more fun! This is supposed to be SOCIAL media, right? I can still demonstrate my willingness to be creative and curious while discussing my passions for quilting and cats (not necessarily in that order). I'm eager to share and teach and learn, but that will require followers and readers. Darn. I guess that eventually I will have to let people know about this little blog, but I think I will wait until I have more interesting information to share.

Quilt thoughts for the day-

The color of this quilt didn't turn out well in the photo. The quilt is in Mom's living room on a green carpet and photgraphed with the curtains shut. What else did I expect, right? Anyway, this is Mom's Ocean Wave quilt for our Stash Buster's quilt group meeting in February 2012. I'm still working on my version.

This is the beginning of my Ocean Wave version. I'm calling it Red Sea for obvious reasons. I hope to have it half done this weekend and will post another photo. I'm really excited about the borders that I have picked out for this quilt! I intend for the quilt to be queen sized when I've finished. Of course, finished is a relative term, right?

I have decided to join my students in the land of Internet usage. I am hoping to post information on the topics that I find most interesting: quilting, kitties, and English. I also hope to use this as an informational page for my students, letting students who missed class catch up on assignments and announcing last minute changes to class schedules. Please bear with me as I explore the world of blogging and work to make this a usable site.