Back in the Office

 

This was my OLD office (after I emptied it out last year). The cubicle walls were high, and we each had an overhead bin for storage.

This is an example of the new generic cubicles. Lower walls, smaller surface area, no overhead bin. I was told mine would be bigger to accommodate the printer I need.

 

When I got there the cubicle was totally empty. I had to move it all from the car to the office, unpack it all and assemble everything. I put it where I thought it would all work. It took me three hours. I set the printer on my right, because it has a fan on one side and I didn't want it to blow on me, but as I worked it was too crowded and unwieldy. I had lunch and then moved the printer to the other corner.

It's much better, and that big space in the middle is great for sorting and organizing. 

As you can see the workspace is fine. Thursday was my third day working in it, and it will be great. The lighting comes over my shoulder and I may need a small lamp but that's an easy fix. The closest person is in an office fifteen feet away.

Yesterday it was announced that 77% of the folks in the company are fully vaccinated and by the end of June that number is expected to be 90%. Effective Monday June 7 our company will be returning to pre-pandemic conditions. Masks and social distancing will no longer be required, however anyone who feels more comfortable wearing a mask may continue to do so. We were asked to be respectful of other people's wishes to continue to wear masks or social distance themselves. I can't really ask for more than that.

It was very nice to see everybody, and to hear stories. I had not realized how fatiguing it would be until mid afternoon when the CEO swung by and told me to "pace yourself. This is more stressful than you think, and we've all been through it." At 4:00 PM I was beginning to believe it. My boss came by shortly afterward and told me to leave a half hour early. By that time I was running on fumes, so I gladly complied.

THE COMMUTE HOME was everything I hated about the old commute home. Crazy traffic, stop and go, cars jockeying for position in front of me... I had forgotten the stress. My least favorite part of working at the office, is still my least favorite part - the drive home. But I know that, and I know how to manage it, so that's OK.

THE BEST PART... OMG, working AT the office, everything is so fast. Files that took 45 seconds to save when WFH now take less than a second. And if I need an answer to a question, I just get up and walk to somebody's office. 

AND... the IT guy told me to keep the laptop in case I needed to work from home. 

I worked from home for fourteen full months. At no time during this pandemic did I feel like I was being taken advantage of. The leadership at my company took steps to protect and support the workers every step of the way. I am very lucky. I am well aware that this is not common. I have worked for this company over 32 years. There's a reason for that. The last fourteen months were proof.

 

Details and Updates

 

A couple of weeks ago I showed a picture of the wrong side of one of my finished flimsies. Part of the reason the backs look so neat is that I don't overhandle my pieces. I work on one quilt at a time, so I don't take them off the design wall, store them somewhere, and then take them out later. Once a block is sewn together I put it on the design wall and leave it there until I sew all the blocks together. I don't use any kind of starch or pressing spray. Some fabrics just fray like crazy no matter what you do. I was fortunate not to encounter them in the quilt above. 

When I posted about matching the pattern of this fabric for the backing of a quilt, Karen wondered if the seam allowance was sewn into the backing. I'm not quite sure what she means. We all know that the selvage edge should be removed because otherwise it will behave weirdly and pucker. After I sewed the seam above, I trimmed that outer edge away, so there shouldn't be any problem.

I received a comment from someone who said she didn't have any room to set out a jigsaw puzzle. Neither do I, so I purchased a "puzzle board." This one has four removable drawers (two are shown at the left) that slide out from underneath the puzzle surface. It has a cover that holds the puzzle pieces in place when I am not working on it (and keeps it safe from my cat). But the best thing about it is it that it slides under the couch when not in use.

I did think the 1,000 piece puzzles sucked up a big chunk of time, so I ordered a 300 piece puzzle. The pieces of this one were quite a bit larger - about the size of a dollar coin - and when I put the edges together in less than 20 minutes, I figured this was going to be quick.

An hour and twenty minutes later it was done. I'm pretty sure there is a sweet spot in between the facility of this one and the complexity of the 1,000 piece ones, but I think that is a problem for another day!

By the time you read this I'll be working back at the office after fourteen months of Working From Home. It isn't just working at the office, it's getting back out in the world. I'll let you know how it feels when I figure it out.

Lady Snaps

I had the idea to make another Snaps quilt for my dad's friend, the lady priest. Here are some pictures of previous iterations of the Snaps quilts.

This is Blue Topaz, the baby quilt I made when my son & DIL told me they were expecting.
 

This is Ola Pola, a quilt I made a year earlier and ended up giving to my friend Daniela.

It came from this book, except I rejiggered the size of the pieces so they would be easier for me to cut. So I think, how did I cut the blocks when I made these back in 2015 and 2016. I should have written the details in my notebook, don't you think?

Not really. Kinda sorta, but not really. There look to be two versions here. Which one did I use? Let's look at the next page...

Not much more help, but it does make me think I worked out the blocks to be 6" x 8". Still not sure, I decided to make a couple.

That confirmed it. The one on the left is 6-1/2" x 8-1/2".

My idea is to make a happy, colorful quilt with alternating blocks of lightish big florals with brightly colored centers and blendish blocks of rainbow colors with creamish center blocks. (Haven't got quite that far yet.) I know I've met this woman, but it was a long time ago. I remember her as being very nice with a big heart. I figure somebody like that will love a happy quilt filled with colors and flowers, so that is what I am going to make.

I grabbed these colored florals on lightish backgrounds. We'll see what happens when they get to the design wall. I do not edit myself at this stage. Yes, you can see a couple of dinosaur fabrics. I think they are fun. And there is a cat print, and a print of children from all over the world, and the really observant amongst you will see the fabric with the bras, and I just think that is way to funny to leave out. There are more fabrics, however...

As you can see I cut out a bunch of fabric already. I don't know if I have enough to use each big print only once (don't think so), but no matter. I will worry about that when it's time to lay out the blocks.

So that is the current sewing project.

The Really Big Thing in my life going on right now is I am going to be working at the office starting on Tuesday, so I have been packing. I am eager to see my friends and get back out in the world. I am under no illusions that Covid-19 is going away any time soon, so I intend to continue to protect myself and take precautions. I have a box of disposable masks that will come with me, along with some antibacterial wipes and hand sanitizer. I am pretty sure I won't get a whole hell of a lot done on my first day back (I am planning to bring a cake to share), and I know there will be an adjustment, but I am ready.

WFH Realities

I keep forgetting that some of my out-of-town friends read my blog regularly and get a little worried if I go "radio silent." Sorry about that. It's been a combination of things, but I'll try to get you all caught up over the next few days.


The powers that be at work decided that with everybody on the admin team working from home it would be a great time to replace the carpet in the front office.

This was my office in late February of this year.

This was my office after I cleaned it out.

 So I went in to clear out my personal items and bring them home and clear my space of all the extra junk and clutter I didn't need. (They've been scanning documents I need to the network so I can access them remotely, but piling the originals on my desk.)

 It's downright humbling to see a place that is usually teeming with people so empty and bare.

On the other hand, it's nice to know somebody still has a sense of humor and has set up the company's cornhole game in the empty space. It must be just the ticket to de stress in the middle of the day.

Curtains! Bins! Floors! WFH! Oh My!

I think I have two curtains in my whole house, and one of them covers the door in the studio. I don't need folks peeking into my house, so I put a curtain there.

Those red things are tomato pincushions. The fabric is appropriate, except when I take a picture of anything on my design wall the curtain is distracting, so I have to crop it out. I thought I would make a curtain that was light, creamy and would disappear. I actually did some shopping online, but never got very far. 

In my cleaning I found this, a curtain I had used in the last place I lived. I thought it might work, so I hung it up, and OMG I thought it was the ugliest, plainest, most boring thing I had ever seen. So I took it down and looked over at my stash. CLEARLY I didn't want beige or cream, but I also didn't want anything really really busy.

This is part of a line of fabric I fell in love with, and bought lots of. This is why I generally do not buy fabric I fall in love with. Because I never cut into it and it ends up being a waste of money. I might have had some vague plans for this but they never came to fruition. I think this will make a perfect curtain for the door. It will give me some privacy and it isn't too busy.  Over the next few days or so, I will make the curtain. You know, eventually.


In yesterday's post, you may have noticed that the floor in front of the fabric bookshelf was clear of piles of fabric.

That is because I made an Executive Decision. I decided that it would take me WAY TOO LONG to sort through all that stuff and that I would lose my mind and my patience before I got to the end of it. Most of it is too big for the scrap bins, and too small to fold properly and store in the shelves above.

The bin on the top is full of all the leftover striped triangles from the Zebra quilts, along with all the scraps and strips from making them. The bin in the bottom is full of all the bits that were lying on the floor and cluttering up my cutting table. Now that it has been confined to one bin, I can sit down some day and sort through it and decide if it is worth keeping or not.

The big bin on the top of the bookshelf is all the leftover backing fabric from the quilts I have had quilted. (Yes, I am well aware that is not the best place for it, but storage is at a premium in this house, so this is where it will stay.) That stuff is long pieces of odd sizes that are hard to fold. There's all kinds of good stuff up there.

I got home last night and washed the last two windows, and the shelf, and then cleared the room of everything I could. I even moved the kitty condo. I got everything up off the floor, and let the Roomba (the REAL Roomba) do its thing. Then I put everything back.

NOW, it's clean. I have some backing fabrics I have to iron and get ready for their quilts. I have some other fabric that was draped over an armchair in my living room that needs to get ironed and put away properly. I have to organize the fabric in the bookshelf stash. I have a few other smallish things to do, but now I have room to do them and I won't feel angry or irritated every time I walk into the studio.

In other words, I can relax. I will give you the full tour tomorrow.

Thank you JustGail for complimenting me on showing my messy studio. Except I didn't. I did a lot of picking up and putting away before I took that before picture. It was much worse, and I was very embarrassed.

But I just had to prioritize. I had had readers begging for the Zebra tutorial, and I had some nagging issues I had to resolve before I could write it.

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of negative reviews my tutes have received, and those are mostly because they did not read the description that said "these are not paper pieced." It's very important to me that whoever buys one of my tutes has all the information they need to make whatever I am teaching successfully. It takes a TREMENDOUS amount of work, and I had to keep figuring out how to get those great big striped triangles to fit together perfectly no matter who made them. So it was work on figuring that out, and the hell with the way the studio looked. Now that the studio is clean I can move on.

Note I did not say "back to normal." "Normal" for my studio would be somewhat messy, indicating creative work is being done.


One final note. I have been WFH - working from home - since mid March. I learned today I will be continuing to do so for at least another couple of months. In the CEO's words to me in an email I received a few hours ago "...we are being super careful and cautious about looking at everyone individually - health risk wise, extended family situation, particular role you are playing - and creating very tailored solutions on how we run the business and attempt to keep everyone safe. Sounds simple, but clearly not easy. But well worth it, it is the only way to do it."

And folks ask me why I have stayed with this company more than 30 years.