life after the shop

It has almost been a month now since we closed the doors of the shop. After a few days of cleaning out the old building and filling up our houses with everything, a new life has started. It feels quite strange for me. I had the first two weekends heading to Melbourne but this week I have got stuck into the cleaning up. The living room is so full of "stuff" even Douglas, one of our dogs couldnt find me in there a week or so ago. My deadline for cleaning up this room has been Easter, but somehow it might not get finished today.
meanwhile I have been doing quite a lot of knitting, but not a stitch of sewing. I have been thinking though of what I might do for summer school.
Karen Cunningham is taking summer school to the Blue Mountains. How exciting! Christine said to me the other day, she thinks she will go up and her sister said she thought she might fly out again. It will be like old times, without all the work, so we are very excited!
I have enjoyed my quilt thinking time and at this stage have several ideas, so as soon as Easter is over and the house empty of visitors, I need to start.
Christine's little granddaughter, Lucy broke her arm again a few days after we closed the shop, so she has taken up a bit of Christine's time as she missed the last bit of school, but when I went over to Christine's a few days ago, she also had some time off from sewing, but was about to start making some stars.

This month in Quilter's Companion magazine, is the special Civil war edition with the pattern of my little Civil war baby quilt. It is a great edition of the magazine with some really lovely quilts included.

Today I am going to try to sort out the problem of all the quilts I have at home. I need to have something built to house them!

happy easter and happy sewing, Susan 

Civil War Quilts

About twelve years ago Judie Rothermel released her first Civil War collection of fabrics. They were gorgeous and I still treasure my scraps. I made my quilt Civil War 1, and taught so many classes and sold so many patterns.  I eventually retired the quilt to my pile of treasures and made Civil War 2, when Judie Rothermel released the next collection. Over the years more Civil war collections have been released than I care to count on and I did make a Civil War 3 quilt. I have them all at home and dearly love all of them.
Next year is the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, a tribute collection has been released by Judie Rothermel and it is time to make a Civil war baby. My quilts will feature in an upcoming issue of Quilters Companion along with the pattern of my new quilt, so today I have been drawing and planning.
My father's family were pioneers of North America, and I have always taken a keen interest in American history.

Civil War 1

which was followed by Civil War 2

and then came Civil War 3

and now for a baby!

Who said quilts don't breed?