TO RETIRE OR NOT TO RETIRE - THAT IS THE QUESTION

A colleague of mine is retiring at the end of the month, after 18 years of service.  I've known Ida for eight of those years.  She is the Accounting Manager and works diligently every day.  After the eight years that I've known her, I find that she works a lot and goes home.  She has no outside hobbies or enjoyments except for her grand children.  I don't know if I could retire without having something else in my life.  Right now, I work so that I can play, wishing that I could spend all of my time in my studio.  

Anyway, it was difficult to come up with a retirement gift for her and as much as I'd like to say that I'm brilliant and came up with an idea on my own, I can't.  I saw a picture of a similar word quilt on Snappyshop Etsy.  It was too expensive for me to order a quilt like this, but as luck would have it, I quilt! so I made it myself.  I asked several co-workers for words that would describe our retiree.  I typed each word using different fonts, then printed them on white fabric (using my old desk top ink-jet printer).  As I was trying to find a suitable picture to use in the piece, I noticed that Ida wears light green a lot - hence the light green background.

After setting the puzzle-pieced words, I machine stitched them together and machine quilted in the ditch.  I actually like the way it turned out.  Hope she does too.