Beautiful job Grace! Each quilt is a Goldilocks: "Just Right"! I absolutely love the piano keys on your patience quilt. Your S&W certainly seems to be inspiring a lot of people, too! They are all really gorgeous and I am *very* jealous; I have no time for quilting yesterday or today. hmmmm, Sunday's pretty open though..... Kelly (Nebraska)

Good to know you're back on better footing. It's a good lesson for all to sleep on the problem before you address it. That's a practice I always recommend. It allows you to cool down and respond correctly to the actual scale of the issue rather than the perceived scale of the issue that is always larger than life and emotional when first encountered. In other words, if this was the final labor on the project rather than just a prelim screwup that the GC hasn't even viewed yet, the scale of the issue would be much higher. You always want to save the escalated response to an inadequate response from the GC after he has had a chance, not the first response being volcanic. 20% for the material surcharge is for the time spent selecting the correct material, any associated required components, ordering the material, arranging for it's transport, receiving the shipment, inspecting it that it is correct and undamaged, and storing it so that it remains undamaged. Time is money and none of those services are free. ;) You'll pay it one way or the other, even if it's not specified in the contract. You'll pay higher labor fees, or you'll get less warranty, or something. The slack gets picked up somehow if the contractor is an actual business man and is going to actually remain in business. It's better to be above board with all charges in writing so you understand what goes into a remodel. If you elect to select and purchase your own materials, then you are the one responsible for all of the above and the contractor is no longer the point of warranty with the product.

I agree with cleaning the chimneas. I've made my share of mistakes and found out it pays off to prep you substrates before adding tiles etc. You had a good haul. Love both sets of blue plates. Yum yum. My sister and I are going to a neighborhood sale tomorrow. Hope I'm as lucky as you were today.

I think every quilt we make serves some kind of purpose and speaks for itself in one way or another. I like the one using charm squares (and will probably copy it someday), workshop quilts are to expand our horizons and someone will feel blessed to have the quilt. The string quilt looks like you might have been feeling 'autumnal' that day so that's the way you sewed........and they are all nicely done! All in all, don't we sew because we like to? We try new things because we don't know if we'll like it or not.....sometimes we do, sometimes we don't and that's ok. (sorry, felt like tossing in some extra thoughts today)