January 2020 – Page 2 – Ramblings From Randi, The Wild Rose Quilter

Wow! It’s been awhile since I did a Sunday Stitching post. But, I’m trying to get back in the blogging habit and I did some stitching today, so here we go. My Mister wanted to squeeze in one more day hunting before deer season closes on the 15th, so I had the house to myself. I did quite a bit of multitasking. After over a decade of longarm quilting, I finally took the plunge and added an Intelliquilter computerized system to my A1 quilting machine. I am loving being able to stitch out an edge to edge while doing piecing work on another project at the same time. I used a panto called Toys from It’s a Quilt Thing to quilt this cute client baby quilt. It stitched out so nicely. My client brought me a denim quilt back with this one. That was a first for me and I was a bit concerned about having tension or thread breaking issues. Not one bit of trouble! My trusty A1 handled it just fine.

While the IQ was working away for me, I worked on piecing some more floating star blocks for a commissioned memorial quilt I’m making for a sweet lady that was recently widowed. Having lost a spouse myself, I know what this means to her. It’s going to be very scrappy looking, with a mix of fabrics from his shirts, a pair of shorts, and even some swim trunks. I am praying it all pulls together nicely in the end. This is such a special project.

I knew it was time to call it a day when I started sewing parts together upside down. 🤦🏻‍♀️ Un-sewing and re-sewing is not so much fun. Once I fixed my boo-boo I called it a day.

Have a marvelous Monday tomorrow! Thanks for stopping by.

Well, here we are at the start of another new year and a new decade! 2019 was quite eventful for me. After 22 years working in the criminal justice system, I was able to take my retirement and pursue the work I love, longarm quilting, as my main employment. The first Monday morning of “retirement” was the happiest I can remember waking up in 30 years. It felt amazing!

One of the other reasons I wanted to retire so early was to he able to spend more time with my mother, who was in the local nursing home with dementia. I retired on May 31st, not knowing our extra time together would be so short. She passed on August 27th after falling and breaking her hip on the 9th. It was a catastrophic injury for her with her mental state. I’m thankful we had a few more lunches, bingo dates, etc. than we would have had if I had not been able to retire. I will miss her every single day of the rest of my life.

About that same time I had started keeping my two preschool age grandsons during the day after my daughter in law, a stay at home mom, was offered a full time teaching position at the local elementary school. What a blessing the extra time with those two boys has been for me.

Yes, 2019 was full of big, big changes here. I’m hoping to be a better blogger again in 2020. We shall see! I’ll leave off here with some shots of just one of the beautiful client quilts I was blessed to work on last year. Happy New Year, y’all! Thanks for stopping by!