Sew I Go...

Tomorrow, good friends come to collect our furniture: couches, chairs, dressers, beds, lamps, rugs, and various little decorative pieces we've amassed during our brief stint with land life. I'm really okay with seeing our things go. Since my first experience living aboard, my attachment to things changed dramatically. I appreciate things and what they can do for me and my life, but I no longer love things like I did pre-liveaboard life.  I have found that even when I'm in lust with something, I reason myself away from that feeling. Things are things and there are more important places (and people) that warrant my love.

Quilting is one thing I really, really enjoy and I'm working furiously on finishing three quilts due by Christmas. I volunteer for our local Hospice, doing bereavement work, and I met a lady whose husband died last year. Together, they have three wonderful children (two in high school, one living away at college). I was asked if I could take the father's clothes and sew them into quilts for each of the children. So far, I have one top done for the daughter (the purple) and working today on finishing the top for one of the sons (the yellow, burgundy, white, gray).

I'm thinking about and hoping to find ways to continue sewing aboard. Our new boat has a little cubby area in the salon that will store a sewing machine and a Tupperware bin of notions and fabric. My next quilt is another t-shirt quilt for a good friend who recently competed in the recent Olympic Games in London. She is a professional windsurfer and has collected so many t-shirts through the years from her various competitions and regattas. She asked me if I would make a quilt for her but then retracted her question since we were moving aboard soon. I told her that I could cut up the shirts, take those with me, and recycle the scraps. Her big black bag of shirts keeps me thinking about the best way to accomplish her project aboard. I'll figure out and I'm sure the final product will be great.