Moving

I am not a last minute person. Given a deadline I deduct a week, set that as the 'real deadline' and aim to finish early. And I always do.
Of course I am not a person who has ever moved house either. Whilst the move did go very smoothly, given that I had minimal time off work, the packing, the unpacking and the decisions about which of the many rennovations should begin first and how they would be done and where we would buy the necessary items crowded out all time for quilting. If you don't count the four days I absented myself to go to Festival of Quilts. Which was all about other people's quilts and not at all about actually making one.
So perhaps it is not suprising that my quilt turned out to be a last minute one about moving house.

And with all quilting items in inaccessible boxes, apart from one carton of lorikeet themed cloth and thread separately packed, I had to be a little inventve with my embellishments.

The  blue houses on this quilt represent  both all the ones we saw, considered and rejected and all the houses which surround us in our new community. The yellow tags are made from greetings cards pushed through the door by our new neighbours, some of whom welcomed us without even knowing our names. The orange band represents the warmth of the home we will create once I get rid of the ubiqitous white anaglypta wall paper and faded brown carpets. But that home will carry memories of the only other home my husband and I ever shared and so I have kept the key for that house together with some thread wraped nails. You may remember the unusual source of inspiration for this quilt. Well, one of the hardest things about leaving that house was leaving items my Dad had made for it - fitted furniture, patio and pergola - as he is not able to do so much phsycial work now. So, the screws from the desk which saw me through three stages in my career and was latterly used as my temporary studio have come with us and  six now adorn this quilt. The green vine stitching and the orange petal stitching represent the wonderful garden which we acquired with the house, the upkeep of which represents a whole new challenge in my life.

We do not have any broadband in the house at presnet due to the spectactularly useless service from our phone provider. So the quilt was completed at lunch time and after work on the reveal day, photographed and cropped on my personal laptop and tranferred to the work internet system via memory stick to be uploaded with a few hours of Californian time to go. Thank God for time differences.