My last home call

I'm a retired social worker and when we go to a person's home to do an interview, we call it a "home call."  I made my very last one on Thursday morning.  I have very mixed feelings about that.  After 45 years of working as a social worker--minus 2014 when I was completely retired--I feel as though a real big change is occurring even as I type this.  I've enjoyed my career for the most part and think that I can truly say that I was a positive factor in many people's lives. So I hope my tombstone says something like "A life well spent."  I'll miss meeting so many people--thousands of them, I'm sure, over the years--but I won't miss all the work involved in solving the problems that are presented for me.  I don't have the mental energy to do the job as well as it needs to be done so I'm happy that I've made the last home call.  Still, . . .  it's a big change!

I was offered this LTE (Limited Term Employment) position in December and will have it finished this week.  I decided halfway through that it was a mistake to have taken this job--I didn't like the pressure of meeting all the deadlines involved.  I had gotten used to doing things on my own time schedule and I like it that way!  So, if I ever get offered another LTE, I know I will decline, so that makes the home call on Thursday the very last one--EVER!

The question now is, how will I spend the rest of the time I have left on this earth? Hopefully that will be 20+ years more, but one can never be too confident, right?  I think I will be able to make the transition to total retirement without a problem. I have family that still needs my advice from time to time.  I have my granddaughter, Lily, as well as the 3 new step-grands that I want to get to know and spend time with.  And Don and I would like to spend time together on the road seeing the places that we vowed we would see "some day."

And of course, there are hundreds of quilts waiting to be made up!  At least, it seems like it's that many to me.  Now that my work schedule had eased up since returning from Maine in February and I've recovered from the nasty cold I picked up while traveling, I've been desperately working on quilting up the yellow Chunky Churn Dash that was a block exchange in my guild. This quilt will be entered in the challenge at the Guild's Guest Night in May and then sent on it's way to Bemidji, MN where my friend Lois will use it in a fundraiser for one of her causes--domestic violence, food pantry, or some such thing.

I have the center quilted up in a design I created and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. There are a few places where I want to take out the stitching and do it better, but most of it's pretty good. I'm using a yellow variegated thread from Gutterman--didn't have access to my favorite brand, Sulky, so I made do.  Last night I outline quilted the appliqued flowers and vines in one of the corners and today will do the opposite corner.  I also drew corresponding flowers, leaves and vines on the non-appliqued corners and will stitch that as well--kind of like ghost stitching.  

I had hoped that this would be sufficient quilting to hold the border layers together, but as I work on it, I see too many open spaces.  I think I'll fill them in with one of the fillers in Diane Gaudynski's books. Diane blogs here at Diane Gaudynski:  A New Tradition in Quilting. She does the most beautiful quilting on her home sewing machine1  I can never hope to come even close to mastering it as she has, but I like her filler designs and will use one of them to complete the borders of this quilt.

I want to have the binding stitched on this piece before I go under the knife on April 7 so I have hand work to do during my recovery.  I also have an embroidery project that I want to have drawn and colored and ready to stitch during recovery as well.  

This is called Farmhouse Windows from Crabapple Hill Studio which you can see here  The 4 blocks of wildflowers in canning jars (each jar a different brand, to be fair, I guess) are crayoned and then embroidered with Cosmo floss.  I plan on making up the quilt as shown but using 30's fabrics instead of the ones used here, in keeping with that farm house feeling.  This quilt finishes at 52 1/4" square so it'll be a nice throw quilt in the sun porch, I think.  

We've been having unseasonably warm temps here in W. Wisconsin and the little snow we had on the ground, no more than a foot, I think, has completely melted.  Don's been getting the back yard ready for seeding new grass and as I was out there nagging helping, I noticed a little green in the flower bed that I'd dug up last summer and used as a nursery bed for the plants we salvaged from the overgrown beds that had taken over the yard.  On closer inspection, I found a large clump of daffodils that had been overlooked when I dug up the bed, and a few clumps of irises that I'd moved from the overgrowth.  Two of my favorite flowers!  I'll be happy to see more green and later on, some colored flowers!  I'm so ready for spring to be here! 

Nuff said!  Don's on his way on a 3 day golfing trip and I'm on my way now to the sewing room!