Make-A-List Monday - Slowly Getting Back to Normal...

Hi, all!

Last week flew by, didn't it? But I got lots and lots done and I'm finally starting to feel like things are beginning to get back to normal, just a little bit.  Are you starting to feel that way too, or are things still out of whack for you?  

Strange things happened last week - like my missing batting (ordered on May 9th!) finally turning up!

I won't bore you with the whole story, but suffice it to say I won't be ordering again from Joann.com any time soon!  I'm mainly just glad it's finally here - it's for church and we were on the very end of our last bolt of batting.

And not only the batting, but 100 yards of 1/4" elastic that I ordered  way back on May 4th arrived today!  I was totally shocked, but grateful.  

Now to my list from last week.  I needed to mail off the "thank you"s to all the H2H participants, and I'm happy to say I did!

And the new post office is awesome - they actually have a second worker who comes in at noon, which meant that I could do all my packages in one trip rather than spreading it out over several transactions.  

I also finished the t-shirt quilt!  It turned out amazing, and is already in the mail back to my customer.  

I did a couple of other fun things, too, like making a see-through mask for my daughter to use when taking the youngest grands to the dentist.  They can't wear their cochlear implants while the dentist or hygienist are working on them, so it's important that they be able to lip read - hard to do through a face mask!  This one took some creative thinking.  I had a pattern, but it was flat against the face and not very comfortable for speaking (or breathing!)  So I tried again, adding some pleats on each side to make it stand away from the lips.  I rubbed Dawn detergent on the vinyl inside, which worked well to keep it from fogging up.  Nancy said it worked great!

 And... I finished piecing my Moongate postage stamp quilt!  I started this a couple of weeks ago, before I began work on the t-shirt quilt, and after finishing that job, I decided to see if I could knock it out quickly.  This one came together this afternoon as I finished the last 25-patch block!  I can't wait to quilt it, but I've got to figure out a backing first....

And today, Nathanael came while his sisters were at the dentist.  He wanted to sew, so I showed him how to use the sewing machine and away he went!  He's actually very good at it - puts his hands on either side of the needle, just like you're supposed to, and never unthreaded the needle!  

And one more excellent thing happened this past weekend - my husband, who has been learning how to use his smoker for a while now, made an absolutely excellent Boston Butt roast!  This one was the best ever - five hours smoked, then wrapped in foil and put back on the smoker for another four hours.  It was awesome then - but tonight, I carmelized some crushed pineapple and added it to the barbecue meat.  We put it into tortillas with some delicious toppings for burritos de pastor - oh my so good!

And for this week, I'm going to try to find a backing for the Moongate quilt, and maybe get it quilted.  I've also got plans to go to church and work on getting the quilt room cleaned up so we can start meeting in there in the fall.  It's a huge mess at the moment and looks like a bunkhouse for COVID more than anything else!  Tomorrow I'll be pulling out the stuff that needs to go to Goodwill - something we do a couple of times a year with donations that aren't useful for us.  That should clear out a lot of space - we haven't done it in a while!  We'll need to wipe down all the tables and workspaces, and probably the sewing machines too.  And somehow we need to space the tables out more than they are now.  Wish us luck!

And if time allows, I really want to give this a try!  I've never heard of kwandi quilting before this, but it looks like a great way to use up scraps!  I found a tutorial for doing it with machine quilting rather than hand quilting, which is probably what I'll try first.  We'll see how it goes!

So now the question is - - - what are YOU working on this week?

Hugs!

Sarah