Happy New Year - Looking back

I had intended this post for yesterday, but the hours in the day ran out. After going to bed in the early hours of this morning, my body tells me I should still be in bed, but other parts of the body made me get up!! There could be a nanna nap scheduled for this afternoon.

So here we are at the start of a new year, and I have spent some time making notes, and going back to my blog posts for the happenings of 2018 for this post. I will do a separate post sometime on Looking forward for the new year.

It seems that I started 2018 with the word organisation, and managed to achieve a lot of this in the first couple of weeks, by going through and sorting heaps of fabric scraps. I had good intentions, but not much organisation happened after that, until August when the new shelves were built in my work room and the whole room was organised. (And I even cleared out fabric by gifting it to others.)

If you look around today, you might think that nothing had been "organised" for a long time. I haven't stopped accumulating more fabric yet, but do have plans for a lot of it, one day.

I guess the highlight of my year was the trip to America in April with 20 other like minded quilters. It was an AMAZING experience. As this was my first ever overseas jaunt, it seemed like a lot of my time was taken up with the preparation for this trip, which added to the busyness of life.

Of course there has been lots of quilting done for my lovely customers, and I thank you all for trusting me with your creations. It is like a quilt show every day here with such a variety of quilts coming in the door.  And all that quilting means keeping up to date with the software that operated Max, and I have done some training and classes with this.

I usually send a Christmas card and newsletter to all my customers each year, but my apologies to you all, as this has not happened this time. My intentions are for a New Year greeting and newsletter to come soon, and I know  a few are waiting for a 2019 retreat schedule. They say that good things come to those who wait??

The year was also filled with retreats, and looking back, I can see there were 10 for the year!! These are always a lot of fun, catching up with old friends, and meeting new ones who join us. Thank you all for coming and sharing good times.

And looking back at the above photos, I can see that 5 of the retreats were Pick a Case Mystery retreat. That means that I had LOTS of quilt designing, writing of instructions and cutting of the fabric in the year that was 2018!!

In amongst all of the above I did manage a bit of personal sewing, which is my therapy. I brought some fabrics back from the US and made a wallhanging for my mum, and 2 quilts, that are even quilted and bound, and reside on the lounges in my house.

I have also managed some more sewing, when I participated in the recent retreat, and I have made another antelope canyon quilt, which I think was in 2018 sometime?? And this week there has been some baby sewing happening, which I will report on soon.

Of course there has been some gardening that happened in 2018, with the establishment of my vegie patch in the back yard. There is always something to do outside, but not a lot happened over the winter "last year" as it was so cold, and I did spent more time inside, recovering from those lovely shingles that I had. But I have to say that getting the shingles did make me stop and rethink my life and schedule and I have tried to step back and reduce the load somewhat.

There was a few successes at quilt shows in 2018, and a few more ribbons are on my curtains from mine and customer quilts that were entered into Adelaide's Festival of Quilts and Melbourne's Showcase. Thankyou to those customers that enter their quilts.

And last, but certainly not least, there has been family time fitted into the year. A new baby, with the birth of Miss Billie in March, birthday celebrations, a wedding, mother's and father's days and other times. It is good to watch the grandchildren grow and see their characters develop, and there will be more of that this year as 2 leave school and move onto the next stage of their lives. There was also the announcement of another baby to come in 2019, so we eagerly wait for news very soon.

That seems to be my summary from 2018, and in amongst all of that there is the sad times too, and seeing friends and family mourn loved ones, go through difficult times, and grow old.

I wish you a Happy New Year, full of blessings, and may you know God's peace through it all. Be back soon.

Blesssings, From Jude