Changes

Our life made a change last Thursday that was unexpected - not terrible, but a change none the less that has created some busyness for me. My oldest daughter is now homeschooling. We pulled her out of public school very suddenly for reasons I won't go into, but I've spent the past week testing her level of work and gathering curriculum for her.

She's a fast learner in 7th grade. I already have 7th through 10th grade curriculum at home from my son's homeschool years, but Hannah is testing beyond 7th grade in math and language arts so far. In science and social studies we are looking for topics that will keep her interest. The textbooks are general covering broad subjects but just scratching the surface. So 7th grade Life Science and World Studies seems shallow to her. She likes to dig deep into these subjects. We've started a list of topics to study this year: Pompei, Japanese culture, the Dust Bowl period, hurricanes, etc. In language arts, we skipped to the back of the book and started on the writing lessons. She used to write stories all the time, so I know she can come up with some great short stories. It will be interesting to see how her year progresses.

Quilting is progressing at a steady pace, but a bit slower. I've finished quilting 5 of Joe's quilts and have 4 of them bound. I have on top ready to load onto the machine, and another quilt waiting to be bound. I'm still hoping to get them done by tomorrow.

This weekend I'm planning on starting the hand applique work on my last series of landscape quilts. Then on the the thread painting and quilting. I'm anxious to get started on them and see what I can do to embellish them.

The photo above is my version of a stained glass quilt. I designed it on the computer in my paint program and used hand-made bias for the "leading". It is quilted with gold metalic thread with the McTavishing design. It took 2nd place at the Ozark Empire Fair for Wallhangings, Machine Quilted.

Susan