Life's Little Mysteries

Kiwi Jubilee -- work in progress

It's been one of those days. I'm sitting here, not sewing, but pondering the whole International Date Line concept. I've always been one to think 'Gosh, if I could just fly to California, I'd gain 3 extra hours in a day and I could finish up some things' (of course, I'm not taking into account the fact that I've really lost 2 hours, because it's a 5-hour flight). Then I went to Hawaii and now I'm all about 'Gosh, if I could just fly to Honolulu, I'd have an extra 6 hours to get things done'. Today, I'm thinking big....'If only I could pop over to American Samoa, I'd have the whole afternoon for a do-over'. But wait, what if something went wrong and we wound up in Tonga...then I'd have lost an entire day....it would be TOMORROW afternoon already! (Can you tell, I'm procrastinating about finishing something?)

I spent all day yesterday working freemotion on Kiwi Jubilee. I tried out a couple of new things....chalking a pattern, and tracing a pattern on exam table paper and stitching through it. It was interesting. It did take twice as long to do designs on 10 blocks because it actually took about 4 times longer to tear the paper off than it did to stitch.

Tweezers are our friends.

So, we're left with a 6" border...to quilt, or not to quilt, that is the question (and now we understand why we are playing Internet search games like "what time is it in ________".)

Since I never left the studio yesterday, rather than succumb to cabin fever today, I braved the 98 degree outside temp (which does not include the heat factor) and headed to my LQS where I signed up for 8 classes in July and August and wait-listed myself for another 2. It's going to be a busy July/August.

In preparation for the first class, I started to look for some fabrics (it's an art quilt) in my stash, and not happy with any of my cheesy cloudy sky prints, leftover from an applique project from long ago, I decided to 'speriment and bleach them.

15 minutes in a half/half mix of bleach and water and nothing. Dumped all but a small amount of water and covered the fabs with bleach. It's been 2 hours. Nada! Seriously, if I had been wearing a black t-shirt, and just splashed a drop of that bleach on me, I'd have had a big ole' white spot in a nanosecond. What's up with that? I think I'll let them soak overnight and if they survive I'll just pull them out and lay them outside in tomorrow's sun and see what happens. (Promise me you won't call Fabric Welfare and report me for excessive cruelty).

I'm off to dinner now, and hopefully will manage to turn on the Bernina tonight and accomplish something. Tomorrow's an office day, and I hate to go back to work feeling I didn't get enough leisure activity in on a weekend.

Keep cool!