Social Distancing Encourages Quilting

I've been so busy of late, I've barely kept up with some aspects of my life, but I've at least been doing my best.  Suddenly, though, I've got lots of time.  The Senior Center where two of my weekly sew-ins take place is closed for the foreseeable future... at least til sometime in April, but will probably get extended.  I'm a bit heartbroken over this - not so much for me, but for the homeless seniors who depend on the place for a hot lunch and a place to hang out during the day where they are welcome, can participate in events and classes, read in the library, do puzzles, play games, as well as clean up and change and such.  Probably both of my guild meetings will be cancelled next month (both have already been held earlier this month), one guild's show in April will probably get cancelled... I will survive but it's kind of depressing

On the good side, if there is one to this, I've got more computer time at home, and more sewing time at home - at least you'd think so.  I didn't do a lot of sewing over the weekend - had a few friends over Friday evening for a game, but we all sat kinda far apart.  Saturday's game got cancelled, as one of our friends, in whose home we were going to meet, was working last week with someone exposed to the virus.  We opted to skip our bi-weekly game at his home.  I watched tv, played with my dogs, went to the movies (yeah, I know, not a good idea, but not many people there, and we didn't sit close to anyone else... it was a special showing of a pristine print of the original King Kong, so not something we could do another time, and the theater wasn't refunding tickets.


In the past week or so, I did finish some things.  I made part 3 of the Murder of the Sphinx murder mystery quilt.  Part 3 consisted of 3 blocks, called 'Desert Flower'.  These are my 3 blocks... haven't read chapter 3 of the mystery yet, but at least the blocks are done.

I got my 'Out of this World' quilt back from the quilter last Thursday... haven't put a binding on it yet, but I'll be trying to do that sometime this week.  Here is the quilt, the back, and a close-up of the adorable quilting:

the Front of Out of this World

the back of Out of This World 

close up of the quilting on Out of This World

I know some people say the back looks like the front, but it's not.. the back was a panel I got dirt cheap in the discount section of my LQS.  $3.00 for that lovely panel... but I had no idea what to DO with it, til I made this quilt, designed by Pat Sloan.  It just needed to be enlarged, so I took my leftover fabric from the front, plus some stuff from my stash, and added some large flying geese, because it IS a space flight quilt, and some strips and some galaxy fabric, and voila!  a back!

Today, I finally got to sit at my machine and quilt!  - I spent some time quilting my hexagons... Only did 11 of them, and I've got another 40 or so to go... Once I get those all quilted, I can sew some more of them.  (note: this quilt requires 990 hexagons.  I've done about 800 so far, so these 50 won't finish the quilt...)  Anyway,  I stopped because the tv in the studio lost signal (damn this rainstorm!) and I was in the middle of a fun episode of NCIS.

So now I'm back in the den, watching tv and writing this post.   I think when I'm done, I might take a nap... I can't go to the store, I don't feel like going out in the rain and I need tp - the stores here have none.  And I NEED tp... I'm not a hoarder and didn't go crazy buying a bunch when this started, and everyone is out of what I use, even Amazon, sigh.  Maybe I'll have to start buying kleenex as a substitute.  or yuck - using fabric!