Do you wonder if I have been quilting during my first year of retirement?

Here I am, on the last day of school June 2018, just outside my classroom door. I had worked in that Room 2 classroom for the past twenty two years. In that time, over 500 kindergarten students had walked through that door and together we learned, laughed, cried (occasionally) and played together. It was hard closing the door for the final time! It felt bittersweet, I had a pretty good idea what it meant to be a teacher. After all, I had spent 40 years of my adult life being an educator. I wasn't sure that I knew what it meant to be retired.

My colleagues held a fabulous garden party at our home to help me celebrate . The cake was amazing and so were all the other things that happened in the last months of my teaching career.

A few days later,  I began to do some work in my quilting space . If you look behind my head, you can see the boxes of fabric that are piled rows high. It was getting harder and harder for me to move the boxes, in order to find fabrics to create new quilts. I have arthritis and I have developed some problems with my mobility. After some discussions with my family, my daughter in law, Rose, helped to design a new storage system for my fabric. They are PAX cupboards by IKEA. They have roll out drawers and shelves. Our son, Kevin, assembled the cupboards. Then, it was my turn to go to work-  the beginning months of my retirement were spent folding fabric(again with Rose's help) and - voila I had a completely different work space.
My quilting space needs a new name with its much improved look. ( I still haven't come up with a name for it- any ideas out there?)
 Even when its messy, its much neater than before. The part I love the most, is that I can find things more easily now.  I also know what fabrics that I have and which draw it might be in. I no longer need my spouse to come and move 4 or 5 boxes so that I can get the potential fabric that I might use. My previous box system was not unorganized (all the fabrics were color coded or theme labeled) but this new system allows me to physically pull out the drawers and actually see what is  in them.
 Do I wish that the quilting space was bigger - sometimes- especially when I am wanting to cut and sew but I have worked in smaller spaces and this one is just great .
You can see that the fabrics are color coded still!  We still could put doors on it but for now we are leaving it this way. I like the accessibility of it and the room is sheltered by large trees and the front portico of the house so I don't get an excess amount of light in my space.

Once we got the quilting space organized, I found I had some time to actually work on projects that had been on the back burner for a while. This quilt was a retirement gift for my teaching grade partner. We worked together for a dozen years. She had retired in June of 2016.  The fabrics were done by Jackie Robinson (she created a fabulous quilt pattern called Weaver Fever many years ago) I chose these fabrics because the wild flowers had lots of lupins in them. My friend, Doreen grew up on the eastern coast of Canada in Nova Scotia. She loves lupins and  I was thrilled to find this fabric line with a floral border and coordinates that included lupins. The quilt  pattern is Sideliners by Maple Island quilts. (They are known for their BQ patterns. You can find their patterns on line- I have enjoyed making a number of them.

The back of her quilt is almost as interesting as the front of it. I saw the Lupin fabric in a magazine and was able to order the fabric from Hancocks of Paducah By chance, I found the backing for the quilt while checking out their sale section. I ordered enough to back the quilt easily. I pieced the bottom of it so that the flowers could go on and on. Doreen is also fond of the mountains so I knew that she would enjoy having mountains, rocks and the flowers of nature all together. A little farther down you will see some photos of some table runners. If you look carefully in the pile, you will be able to find the table runner I made for her as a Christmas/ birthday gift for her as well.

One of the other projects I  finished last summer, were two wedding quilts . They were a kit that came from Connecting Threads in Vancouver, Washington. The Move Over pattern by Mari Martin came as a kit. It was generous enough that I got both of the quilts out of the one kit.
Both of the quilts have the same fabrics except for one black fabric(my cutting error). The borders are different on each quilt. It was an interesting pattern to make because I don't usually work with such light colors.
 I quilt all of my own quilts - you can see my Babylock quilting machine on my table.The machine has an extended bed on it to make quilting easier.  I have free motion quilted a king sized quilt with this machine, without any problems.

By the time early fall came I  had completed the wedding quilts and Doreen's quilt .  One morning in my email in box, I saw a request  from a lady who was looking for people to pattern test a pattern that she had designed for a quilt.
When we bought our house in 2016, we bought a king sized bed. Most of the quilts that I made in the past, were large queen sized quilts so we no longer had a quilt that was really large enough for our bed. I decided that I should make myself a retirement quilt.
The photo below shows some of the strip sets that made the strippy part of the zig zag for the quilt.

In the end, I made over 600 blocks that were cut into 4 and half inches square. I have no idea how many scrap strips I used but there were a lot of different fabrics - a few were as old as 30+ years old. I got rid of lots of fabrics when we moved house, and again ,when I culled the collection so that I could more easily fit the fabric in the new cupboards. However, I did have a drawer of strips and small chunks of fabrics that I had saved for sentimental reasons. Most of those pieces were left over scrap fabrics from family quilts that included a baby quilt that I had made for our son.
I used 6 yards of background brown /black fabric for the alternate zigzag pattern. I actually ran out of background fabric, so I had to find an alternate fabric for the inset triangles on the border. It was an interesting challenge. This quilt came completely from my fabric stash so that was a very satisfying feeling as well. I have the back of this quilt prepared - Next I will spray baste it and then quilt it on my machine.  It is definitely a king sized quilt  so it will take a while to quilt !                                                            

It will look fabulous when it is completed!

The back fabric  needed some piecing as the fabric was not quite enough for the large quilt. I though a set of blocks that were left over from the front was the perfect solution for quilt back. 

                                                                            

 I wanted to find a simple Christmas gift for family and friends so I made these 10 minute table runners. ( I also made a few bowl cozies for wrapping a bowl in to keep your food warm.)
All these fabrics came from the fabric stash too! I altered the design a little by making them a little bit bigger than the original dimensions of 9 inch center strip with  18 inch fold over. Most of them are 10 inch centers and 20 inches on the fabric fold overs. I did put batting down the center I also quilted around motifs in almost all of them. You can find tutorials for these table runners  on You tube under 10 minute table runners.
Also the bowl cozies pattern is on You tube!
In the end, I made around thirty of these table runners - I gave them all away to others - so I need to make some more if I want to have one for our table in our living room!

Below you can see Doreen's tablerunner  which is bigger again because I used the border motif for the center of the table runner. I did quilt around all of the flowers in the central panel so it took more than 10 minutes to complete . LOL

Since Christmas I have made 4 quilt tops -

 These quilts are another pair in a series of convergence quilts I have made, using the Ricky Tims Convergence Quilt pattern. You can find the pattern in his book" Convergence Quilts" - my variation uses larger squares for the quilts but the technique is the same. These quilts are about the size of a big throw or twin sized quilt . Unfortunately the light in our great room does not always make for excellent photos.  In each case, I am quite happy with the color combinations. If you look at the top right corner of the one on the left, you will find a bold print with all of the other colors in it. I have used it as a border for the outside of the quilt.

I love the Spring Easter egg colors of this one on the right. The top left corner is a batik with the other three colors in it. The challenge with convergence quilts is always to make sure you get enough color differences so that you don't get mush. I think they are both happy quilts. I have found fabrics for backs and will get the backs made up this week so that I can get quilting on them. 

 I love Sunflowers and this another version of the Sideliners pattern that I used in Doreen's quilt. I have done a few quilt series - using jelly rolls, this Sideliner pattern, a twisted flower design, and the convergence patterns. I love that you can use different fabrics and the quilts all look different The BQ patterns tend to showcase the fabrics so if you have some large fabric prints that you want to show off then BQ patterns are great for that purpose..Some fabrics are better contrasts. Athena the cat gives her cat approval to all my quilts . It is important to test drive a quilt you know :)

You can see the colors better in this photo below and you also can also see the big sunflower border that I added to complete the top on this one.

 I have made many many of these burrito baby wraps. With the first ones that I made, I tied them together rather than quilted them. I used  flannelette  for the one side and cotton for the other side. I first made this pattern from a McCalls Baby book of quilting in 1982.
 This one was the most recent one that I have completed. It was made last fall for a friend's baby. It has a minkee insides but it still looks like a cloverleaf when it is opened. The baby's mom is very fond of squirrels so I was thrilled to find squirrel fabric for it. They work great in a car seat or for wrapping a baby against the weather.





This larger children's quilt is for someone special - a young child that does not yet have a quilt from me. It was a quilt kit that has the Very Busy animal stories of Eric Carle. It is quite a large quilt and will take a little while to quilt . My summer plans appear to include some quilt projects that need to be completed. 

So this is the end of my quilting journey from the past year. I still have many pieces to finish quilting, From this post, it appears that there was some quilting happening in my first year of retirement. Quilting was not the only thing that I did during my first year, but I will post more about my other projects in my next blog post.
When I am not quilting these days, I have been busy taking some on line courses  and attending some movement classes to help me with some mobility issues that have come from having arthritis. I am getting out with friends for lunch or coffee, and trying to find a new rhythm in my retired life.
It is a change of pace- occasionally busy, but I get to have more choices about when and how long  I have to eat lunch etc. I have time to have bathroom breaks too which is great as well.
 Life is simpler and I am learning to take the time to smell the roses. Still, I am not sure what my new purpose or focus in life will be- For now, I am finding  a new way of living as a retired person.
 I hope that you too take the time to enjoy life's daily pleasures. Look around and enjoy, Next time I will share a little more about other projects in my retirement life.  Stay well .
Warmest regards,
Anna 

Everyone needs a new spring outfit. I bought this one recently at my favorite consignment store.