Quilting Again

Oops, I'm a day late in posting! In my defense, it was because I got caught up in quilting. I don't know if this happens to any of you, but sometimes I feel like I've lost my sewjo but I have deadlines. And while I initially don't feel like quilting, because I'd rather scroll social media or play games on my phone, I do force myself to sit at my sewing machine because I do have deadlines. Then, before I know it, it's been a few hours and I am happily quilting along. 

That was the case with my Barnstar Sampler this past week. My callous had disappeared on my finger over vacation and I know it's a little painful to get it to show back up, simply because it means pricking my finger over and over again with the needle. But I do want to finish it by Thanksgiving, so I needed to pick  it back up. If I only quilt the 6 blocks I need to each week, I'll have it done in five and a half weeks. but seeing as it's Monday, and I finished four blocks yesterday, I think I'll be a little more ahead of schedule. 

But I still need to figure in those baby quilts. I basted both of them on Saturday and started quilting the easier one yesterday. Well, I finished quilting it this morning. Trimming and binding is going to wait until I have the other one done as well so I only need to clear off my cutting mat once. Small space problems, my machine sits on the table on top of my cutting mat. 

The baby quilt for the little girl is going to be a harder one for me. I want to free motion quilt it, because I feel the pattern just calls for it, so bright and cheerful and happy looking. The challenging part is that I haven't done any free motion quilting yet on this machine. And I got it a year ago. Which means it's been over a year since I've done anything but straight line quilting. I'm going to need to pull out my practice block that I use as a test for quilting. I'm thinking of just doing loop de loops because that's what I'm best at. And because my brother asked if I could somehow tuck her name, Joy, into the quilt. Which I think should be fairly easy (?) to quilt in cursive and will sort of blend with the loops. That is also going to be practiced before I touch the quilt. 

I also visited the local quilt guild's quilt show that they put on every other year over the weekend. There is no way I can compete with the skill of these ladies. I may also be comparing apples to oranges because I don't do applique and I think those quilts wowed me the most. 

Like, how does one compete with those? The hardest part was picking a viewer's choice, I wanted to pick them all, in part because they all were beautiful and also because you could see the time and effort that went into each and every one and they all deserved a ribbon. 

And I finally got those blocks laid out on the wall. I'm about half done with the full blocks and then I have all the half blocks that go around the edge to make it more squarish. I think I might applique it to a piece of border fabric when I eventually get there because I don't know how else to finish the edge. This is also not the final layout, just me pinning what I have done to the wall. I'm also very happy with my decision to attach the white to two sides as I go rather than wait until the end, because knowing myself, I'd probably get stuck there and start another project because sashing is boring to hand sew. 

Well, I need to get back to quilting because I have deadlines to meet and all that. Happy quilting!

Back to Reality

I took entirely too much hand sewing work for this vacation. I did finish a bunch of blocks, but I didn't need to take quite so much. I had thought that when we got back to our AirBnB at the end of the day that I would want to wind down with some sewing. What I ended up doing instead was going through the 400+ pictures I had taken each day and deleting the blurry ones or the ones that didn't really have anything in them. In my defense, I was taking most of them out of the passenger side window while we were driving. 

I did sneak in a little bit of sewing though in the mornings a few days and at the airports. Mostly I was tired on the plane so I didn't sew a whole lot. My floor is a mess, so I'll take photos of where I'm at with that project for next week.

But South Dakota was beautiful and like nothing I've ever seen before. The sky was bluer than I've ever seen it and the contrast between the bright sky, the brown grasses and the dark green ponderosa pines started sparking a color pallet for a quilt. Mix in a few bright happy yellows to remind me of the aspens that were changing colors, and I'm beginning to understand why Bonnie Hunter has so many quilts inspired by trips she's taken. I might need to steal her idea. 

So what's on deck for me quilting wise? Well, I need to get back to some hand quilting, I have a self imposed deadline to make. And I'm hoping at the bare minimum to get the two baby quilts basted. Still no word on gender for the third one I need to make. But if I have enough batting here, I might also get my Dresden plate quilt basted. I have a bunch of rolls of batting, they're just not stored here in my tiny apartment. 

Then, this Friday and Saturday is the local quilt guild's show. I'm not a member, I'd like to be, but I can't make the requirements for meeting attendance with my work schedule. So I'll go when I can and pay the guest fee. But I'm super excited to attend, and for their next show in two years, I'm going to try to work something out with my work schedule so I can attend enough meetings so I can enter a quilt or two to be judged. Still not committing to anything though, my heart starts to race a bit at that thought. 

Other than that, it's just getting back into the routine around here, there was laundry and grocery shopping yesterday because I needed clean laundry and there was no food in the house. And after a week of eating out, I'm ready for home cooked food!