Retirement = Time to learn to Quilt

Description

I have always wanted to learn how to Quilt but with my work requiring traveling most of every year, there was no time.  My leap of faith that it could happen was carving out a spot in a guest room.  It isn’t a big space but it works.  The furniture was mine as a teenager and every drawer is filled with fabric…you can see a picture of my mom and me on the dresser along with mementos of my travels.  The closet is organized to hold thread, floss, batting, books, hand quilting templates.  The doll house is slowly being restored and furnished and I am learning paper piecing to make quilts for the bed and chests.  The plastic boxes under the bed hold flannel for baby quilts and seasonal fabrics.

My Bernina Sport was a gift from my husband 35 years ago.  It is an old and good friend.  Together, we have made dozens of flannel baby quilts over the years.  They are made like a pillow case and tied…that was my only quilting skill until I retired in June 2015.  In the past two years,  I have been able to take quilting lessons and I am about to finish my third pieced quilt.  I call these pieced quilts hugs and every part of the process feeds my soul.  The pieced bird is made from scraps of the red, white and blue quilt and will become the label for my oldest grandson’s quilt.

We live in northern Vermont and have many visitors in the summer and fall.  Once the leaves fall, the room is mine for quilting most of the winter and spring.  What can be more cozy than that?  I would love to win the Bernina Red sewing machine.  It would help me move to free motion quilting and simple embroidery embellishment.   Retirement really is a beginning…not an ending.