Well, Christina, I try to get off at 3, bc DH gets home a little after four. It's amazing what I can do in an hour and a half!! I try to "look busy when he gets home. Supper is usually ready. :lol: Only kidding of course. I'm certainly not kidding myself. He knows exactly what I'm up to. :roll:

books look great on shelves just below ceiling ht or just above the door. and sometimes along the perimeter of a room on the floor.

I like this idea - thanks!

I hear ya Christina...your not off key, lol! i too find that if i turn on music while in 'sewing cave' that i am more relaxed and stay on track and just have the most fun. I sing with the radio too, so maybe we could start a 'quilters quartet'. woo hoo! C

yeah, i have to pull myself out of cave to go cook, but having to eat at certain times of day helps keep me on track. wish I had a dishwasher though.

I have been on a quest to use up leftover quilting pieces. For the last 2 months, I have been making shopping bags, Quiche Caddys, Purse's and totes and Messenger bags for my wife, and a couple of wall hangings. Here is the link: http://good-times.webshots.com/album...oTdlH?start=12

John

John, What a lucky woman your wife is. Awesome work-all of it the woodwork, quilts, how is it that you are sane after the quilt from hell? tjanks for sharing.

I will tell you a little secret. I started making those diagonal squares with no particular thought in mind as to how many I would need or what I was going to do with them. I was having so much fun I didn't pay attention to how many I had made. Well 2 weeks later I looked at the stacks and stacks of little squares, and said to myself. "What have I done"?. So all of those various quilts starting from "The quilt from hell" were made with those large stacks of small diagonal squares. Even the 4' x 8' Library quilt. The ladies at the library approached me to make a quilt for permanent display in the library. So I said sure. I ran right home and got to work using more of those stacks of squares. I still have a drawer full of them and I never open that drawer as it might cause me to run screaming out of the room and never to return again. Well, maybe not that bad, but I have been putting off doing anything more with them for, oh I don't know, 20 years or so. I have included the remainder in my will so that might tell you something.

John

Well, quiltncrazy, it's like this. I don't know how many dirty dishes you have, but this is what do. (I had a portable dishwasher when my kids were here, but as soon as they left the nest, I got rid of it so I could have a little more space in the kitchen.) Since I've been quilting (and retired), I wash dishes only ONCE a day -- usually at night after our evening meal. During the daytime, I rinse and stack as the dishes are used. So there is no smell and it doesn't look so bad. (Not that I care. :lol: ) So when I'm preparing the evening meal, I put the dishes soaking in hot sudzy water and clean up as I cook. If anyone comes in and doesn't like what they see, let them visit someone else. My friends haven't complained. Most of them do projects also (sadly enough, not quilting).

On weekends, of course, if I prepare a meal for the clan, we clean up after the meal. (And we use a lot of paper products. :U)

John, pardon my stupidity, but what diagonal squares? I had a hard time with the link. But that's nothing new, I'm a computer klutz. Tell me about all of the squares. I have boxes of fabrics that I could be doing that with. How did you decide what size to cut?

I had been thinking about cutting mine into strips, since I like strip piecing better than putting squares together.

If you take a square and cut it across the diagonal from point to point. Then match that diagonal to another of a contrasting color or other color combination that you like, and put the good sides together and then sew along the diagonal. when you fold the now sewn together pieces out and press it flat you have a square made up of 2 different triangles that make up a square. I hope that is clear. enough. In the case of the squares I made they came out to be 1-1/2" squares. and it takes a lot of them to make up a large quilt. over 1500. They were very popular during the late 19th century and were known as 1000 piece quilts.

John