Jo Ferguson

We spent the Tuesday holiday after Christmas at my sisters house, I was expecting to see my neices and their children and was most suprised to see an Aunt and 4 of my cousins there as well.

It was a lovely day, catching up, I hadn’t met up with my cousins for way too many years.

A Family Day

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We tried to take photos of the different generations that were present, I think we finally got it right, although there was some discussion about who should be in one photo, we almost left Julien out.

There are some clowns in this family, it took many shots to get a decent picture of my sisters grandsons, and heaven only knows why we were pointing in the group photo.

We even managed to get a baby bump photo of my younger niece and the bub she is expecting, she was at work when we took the family and generation groups but I got her and her lovely partner in a photo before the day was over.

A great fun family day!

Last week ‘someone’ posted a link to fabric boards, great little boards to wrap your quilting fabric on, like the ones the quilt shops have, only smaller. I checked out the link and decided I had to have some, I wanted my fabric stash to look nice and tidy and easy to see what fabrics I had.

Being a bit short of cash after the silly season I decided to use corflute instead of paying US$65 for 50 boards, I could get the corflute much much cheaper. Home it came all cut to the size I asked for, the only difference is mine don’t have the little ‘V’ cutouts in them, but I can live with that.

Today was my RDO, what better time to start the job! Here is my stash cupboard, as you can see it really needs sorting.

This photo was taken after I had sorted the 2 bottom shelves!

I filled 2 garbage bags with fabric and started on a third bag, some fabric was bits of fleecy leftover from making baby sleeping bags, clothes for grandchildren etc, I even found some fabric I had bought to make my then 5 year old daughter a winter dress…. this fabric has travelled up and down the east coast of Australia during many house moves for 34 years, today it went in the bin!

When my mum died almost 15 years ago, I bought her craft stuff home and stashed in the bottom of this cupboard thinking I would sort through it later, yeah right! I found coat hanger covers knitted with that nylon ribbon and lace, plastic tubing and a cutter to cut it with, you know the type (well if you are old enough lol) it screws on to the table and you push the plastic tubing through and chop.

Heaven only knows how many crochet doily books mum had, because I distinctly remember giving a lot to her local St Vinnies when she died, but I found a few more today, along with the cotton and crochet hooks, but I might use them… one day…. once again, altogether now… yeah right!

By now it was lunch time and I hadn’t started to wrap my stash fabric on to the little boards, I was really wishing I hadn’t started this job today grrrr! Before stopping for lunch I just had to wrap some fabric.

Doesn’t that look nice!

Time for lunch, and check my emails, oh better check Facebook too while I’m at the computer. Maybe try to find out why I can’t print to hubby’s new printer…… what’s that? Me procrastinating! Never!

Dinner time and I have one third of my shelf done, still have to pull the rest of the fabric out, sort it and wrap it, wonder why I bought all those autumn tone leaf fabrics, I obviously haven’t used much of it? Still wishing I hadn’t started this job today.

I really wanted to be working on the quilt for my new grand nephew or niece who is due mid year.

It is now 11:50pm, hubby and I have figured out the problems with his new wireless printer, that only took an hour <sigh>, we have moved the wifi modem to another spot on the desk hoping it won’t heat up as much, we have moved his shiny new printer to give him more desk space, I have thrown out an old laptop, a shredder that doesn’t work, an old calendar and anything else that took my fancy and moved cords and plugs around in the computer room.

Oh and guess what, my stash is done too. Well except for the fat quarter shelf, but that can wait, my larger quantities of fabric look lovely on their little coloured boards and standing upright in my cupboard!

I think I need some more reds and I didn’t realise I had so much yellow, I did know about the blues though…. gee it’s great to be able to see what you have at a glance, if I had done this before starting the baby quilt it would have been much easier to choose my fabric.

So tomorrow, it’s back to brights and animals and my first quilt in 12 months.

So whoever that ‘someone’ was, I now thank you, after having cursed you all day, I love the look of my ‘little quilt shop’ stash and I still have spare boards so any new fabric can be wrapped before putting it away!

I did learn something today, all my older fabrics were washed, sometime over the last 10 years I stopped washing them and you can’t tell in any of my quilts if the fabric was washed first or not, maybe I’ve been lucky, but I do wash all my quilts and throw them in the dryer as soon as they are finished, maybe that makes up for not washing the fabric first.

Time for bed, I am exhausted after my busy day!