For September I have planned to do other things besides quilting.  I recently retired so I can allocate more time to sewing, piecing quilts and longarm quilting…travel, life…I could go on, but before I do all these things I have chores to do.  I have worked from home in one form or another for most of my 37 year insurance career. My daughter is returning to the USA (yay!) after living in Europe for seven of the last eight years, and bringing her husband with her.  They will stay with us while they get settled here.  As my APQS longarm took over my daughter’s bedroom, I had to change my office into a bedroom.  Conveniently, I retired!  As it turns out, I still manage to involve quilts as a minor character in my September endeavors…so far.

Unfortunately, I did not think to photograph my office before taking it apart.  I will say the three by six foot standing desk at the entrance of the room concealed the size of the room.  This room was originally my daughter’s nursery, hence the blue wall (see my Quilt for Baby blog entry for the explanation).  Here’s what the room looked like once it was cleared and before the makeover.

So here’s the blue wall.  I retained the shelf, a little sentimentality with a nod to the nursery.

On my sewing machine, I pieced and free motion quilted a wall hanging to serve as a headboard to the bed.  However, I don’t know how much I like the wall hanging.  B. likes it a lot. I heard H. said he liked it, but he might be humoring his MIL.  C. doesn’t like it.  When I designed this, I was trying to be a little modern, and wanted negative space to free motion quilt.  I might make another wall hanging for this spot.  I’ll see…

I have made a quilt top to match in color, but to not match in design.  I just have to quilt it.  I’m not sure I’ll get to it before they arrive.

Here’s the rest of the room.  It is really a nice, light and airy room.

And to show the prospective occupants that Honey and Charlotte (their cats) will be at home here, when they arrive in advance…

This is their water fountain.  I haven’t figured out how to put it together yet, but I will.  This water fountain isn’t supposed to be near their food or litter.  So it was an easy choice, the fountain goes in the bedroom!

On a side, I have had cats most of my life, but I don’t like how they jump on the kitchen counters, so I have devised this temporary fix to keep them out of the kitchen:

This is some of my practice muslin on two tension rods in the doorway to the kitchen.  Here’s hoping it works.  Oh, and yes, I know, the feathers are upside down!  OK, so that was my week!