Retirement is a busy time!

When I first retired, I spent all my time promoting my book and doing as much travel teaching as I could. Any time I had away from quilting was spent with family, especially grandson time! So I was always very, very busy. Now that I am mostly retired from that stuff, too, I still try to spend as much time as possible with family and only work on doing art and quilting that I really enjoy. And I am STILL as busy as ever!

This past weekend was the third weekend this year that I have been able to enjoy a hockey tourament with grandson and family. Not as much time to spend on art but I am having a wonderful time in retirement.

Had some more carpet inspiration, too.

I don’t know that I’ll ever use all these carpet inspirations directly as projects, but it’s fun to notice and think about design.

Speaking of design….I was going to use this project as the base/background layer for a heavily embellished wall hanging.

And then I made the mistake of looking at my scrap piles!

Lots of black and whites…and on this shelf…

and more on this shelf…

And there is even more scattered here and there throughout my stash. Why should I spend a bunch of time creating a new project with those scraps when I can simply expand the one I have and USE UP some of those scraps? Sometimes the lure of cutting into new fabrics is too strong, but lately I’ve become very conscious of textile waste and conservation and I want to do what I can to avoid making more waste.

It will be very easy to add improv borders and turn this into a practical, useable quilt. And it will be interesting and “artistic” enough to keep me at it and actually finish it. It may not happen this week or even next week, but I’m sure enough that it’s the plan for this pile of fabric. I do have a few projects and deadlines to meet in the next couple of weeks so it looks like I’ll be back to many projects at once again…which is more of my usual way of life!

I told you retirement is busy!