"Afternoon Delight" during evening Olympics watching...

During my sporadic evening Olympics TV viewing, I was able to finish more "Afternoon Delight" blocks.  I now have 25 of the 40 applique blocks hand-stitched.  These blocks will finish to a little bigger than 6 inches square.

"Afternoon Delight" is a quilt pattern by Sue Garman.  There are quite a few pieced, scrappy blocks in this quilt, which I hope to power piece at a retreat at the end of September.

The Olympics were fabulous!  I wish I could have spent more time watching.  And it was really nice to have the media focus on something else for 16 days.  The next ten weeks of political stuff are going to be brutal in the ol' USA.

I wish we could adopt something like the Canadians have in this country...they have a very limited time of campaigning before elections.  I think I heard that last time it was something like 78 days, which was long for them.

Wow...it feels like it has been 78 months here!

I have been working on the attached 3-car garage and basement wood shop.  There are a lot of tools and stuff on this property spread between the garage, shop and 6 outbuildings.  It's hard to organize it one building at a time when you don't even have like things together so you know what you are dealing with.

One of my super powers is organizing, but not having everything in one place while trying to do it is making me a little nuts!  And, of course, as you organize stuff things ALWAYS get worse before they get better.  Everything has to be removed and piled so that you can arrange shelves, bins, and wall organizing systems.  

Ugh.

I would much rather be stitching, but things are so spread over the property that we can't find things we need.  Then we go out and buy what we can't find, then almost immediately stumble on what we needed...so frustrating.

This place was a handful, even before adding our belongings to "the mix."  My parents were working physicians right up to the end and they struggled to get a handle on organizing stuff.  Then the seven of us kids and families would visit off and on.  Some of us would work when we visited, but there was always more stuff to do.  And while the 800+ acres were intended to be wild and unspoiled, there is a certain amount of maintenance that needs to be done to keep nature from just completely taking over!

I keep thinking that once things are more organized that I will have more regular time for stitching, designing and quilting.  But for now I am trying to make the most of the time that I have.

It helps to have a pile of blocks like this prepped so that when I have time for a little de-stressing stitching, there is something to pick up immediately.

I have always been attracted to the Reproduction fabrics, but now that I live in the middle of the woods in a log home, it just seems natural to be sewing with these fabrics more and more has I design blocks or work through my "bucket list" of other designer's patterns in which I want to get completely lost.

On top of everything else, with the weird tropical rain systems that have been parking themselves over the southeast, we have discovered that screw fasteners that hold down our nice metal roof have been working themselves out.  We have developed a leak somewhere above the master bath and we have a mildew situation slowly emerging on the ceiling.  Now there is a little drywall to do after we remedy the situation.

I have been entertaining roofing companies submitting estimates for replacing ALL THE ROOF SCREWS...ugh.  Hopefully work will start early next week.

So, it is very nice to have blocks prepped for LOTS of fabric therapy, as I need it GREATLY right now!

In stitches,
Teresa   :o)