Change is good

It has been a busy year. I had put my sewing on the shelf, so to speak, to get through each day. Yesterday I put the sewing machine to work again and picked up a long forgotten project and sewed a few rows together.

Tom and I have moved into a very small apartment. My quilting business has been moved into a very small studio space about a mile from the apartment. The sewing room was the last thing to get organized in the move. The house has sold and our lives go on.

Today as I drove to the gym before through the blowing snow spits I was very thankful that getting up and lighting a fire was no longer the first thing I do every morning.  My priorities have changed! I go to the gym first thing. Next on the list of things to do is to go to the studio and quilt.

I don’t have internet at the studio so my quilting routine has also changed. I sit and read on my kindle for a few minutes when I am ready to take a break. I feel guilty when I’m reading and not quilting so I don’t read for long before I am back at the machine.

The biggest change of all is when I leave to go home the quilting on customer quilts is done for the day. No going back into the other room after supper to do another pass. I have to be more determined when a project stretches into longer than I wanted it to. I have not fallen behind and I am not too old to learn a new trick or two.

I have had the good fortune to have such excellent customers they were willing to find me in my new place and keep on keeping me busy.

My new studio is cozy, only 400 square feet. ¼ of that area is an enclosed space where i can keep my “to do” quilts on a shelf.

Finding clever ways to hang the pantographs and to store all my tools required a very good lot of thinking. I have many of my studio quilts that were displayed still in a storage locker. I am not sure yet how to utilize them.

Looking out the window as the fine snow was blowing made me feel like I was inside of a snow globe. The world goes by outside. I see the cars waiting at the traffic light each morning during rush hour. I hear sirens as the ambulances go down the street on the rare occasion one rushes by. I see an occasional walker and once in a while someone walks into the studio and asks something of me.

The first day a man stopped in and asked if I would consider hemming pants for him. No. Yesterday a young fellow stopped in and asked what tree quilting was. His dad cut down trees and they had a lot of wood that they needed to find someone to sell to. I explained that I quilt for people and it has nothing to do with trees. Well thanks anyway for stopping in. He didn’t have a clue.

Life goes on.