NQR

This is pretty cute... a dad waving to his teenage son on the bus each school day through the year.

http://waveatthebus.blogspot.com/

Find time today to Honor those Americans who have given their lives to keep this nation free. 

Attend a memorial service in your area. 

Learn and display proper flag etiquette. 

Participate in a national moment of remembrance at 3 p.m. 

And thank every vet you see.

I was a Fotomate, back in the day.  Fun job!

c. 1975

Try as I might, there's not a whole lot of stitchin' goin' on.  Work has been sucking the life out of me for the past several weeks, which leaves me mentally and emotionally depleted.  My work BFF was "let go," supposedly for lack of funds, and four days later we got a bombshell dropped on us that a new layer of management had been added --  another whole layer of BS to each and every day.  More people will be leaving, I suspect, and even when you know you excel at your job, it's difficult not to worry.  And even though I know quiltmaking calms me and gives me that "Calgon, take me away!" feeling, sometimes it takes more energy than I have just to pick up where I left off.

I had a personal goal to have this baby finished-to-flimsy by April 16th, but that didn't happen.  Yesterday I was putting blocks on the wall to get a visual and realized something was wrong.  There should have been only two chains, but I was ending up with three?

These were the alternate blocks I sewed.

Sewed wrong, that is.  There was no place to put them in a 3-chain design.  Yes, there are some in the picture, but they don't go.

The seam should have been on the other side.

Although a quilt with three chains was also part of my EQ file, I'll have to make a decision tonight:  make three chains then one chain across; keep going with three chains and make more blocks to make it the size I wanted; or unpick 48 blocks.

The week in pictures

I don't have a lot of time to sew during the week, so staging the next step helps for whenever I get back to it.  

Baby Steps 101

1. Take on a challenge from Linda to get off my duff and piece the quilt shown.
2. Find the unused box of 4-inch squares from Y2K and start pairing them up.  See that Cup-a-Soup box?  Chock full of squares cut from every fabric the shop bought that year.

3. Unhook the laptop from the display and make room to sew.

4. Dig out the sewing machine and dust it off!

5. Find that DVD of Mad Men that needs watched and returned. 

6. Start sewing.  

7. Decide that you can't hear the storyline and switch to music instead.
8. Put the DVD back in while you square up.
9. Trim the squares because they really aren't all 4 inches after all. Or square for that matter.

 9.  Rinse and repeat.
10.  Delight in the small things.