That Time of Year

 

Why can’t we just pick a time and stick with it all year? I don’t know why it matters to me since I have retired from my “regular” job and can sleep an extra hour if I want to. I don’t mind having the extra hour of daylight in the evening since it is Lent, and there are extra evening church activities for the next six weeks. 

I have been busy with some vintage quilts I am quilting. This one is my favorite. 

Sometimes the hand-pieced ones give me problems because they are wonky and won’t lay flat, but this one is perfectly flat. I’m guessing the fabrics are 1950-ish. 

Although, some look to me like they could be 1940’s.

I am definitely not an expert on fabric dating. LOL. 

I also decided I wanted to make a tote for someone, and pulled out this pattern.

I managed to get the patchwork pieced and today I will get out my twister template and get everything cut out.

I plan to use the black with white dots for the main part of the bag. I’m still thinking about how the handles will look. I can follow the pattern, or do handles with a different color binding. Not sure.

Productivity?

This pretty well describes how I feel. I am working and working on staying productive, but I’m just so unmotivated. It’s all a struggle. I have been going to the gym three days a week, hoping that will increase my energy level. It’s only been a week, so time will tell. 

I did manage to get a couple of quilts finished this week.

I couldn’t get the color to photograph correctly on this one. It’s all Kaffe fabrics. I think it shows up a little better in this closeup.

I also finished this jellyroll race quilt and put the binding on it.

The back is the same as the border. In fact, it didn’t have a border, and I used some of the backing fabric to add one. 

I also got three of the placemats quilted.

It’s not much, but I was happy to get something done. 

My grandson’s birthday was Tuesday, and here he is with the quilt I gave him.

The fabric has footballs, soccer balls, and baseballs. I thought he had probably outgrown the last one I made him (Mario Brothers). 

I need to clean house this weekend and do laundry. I ran out of laundry detergent, and I keep forgetting to buy more. Now that I wrote it down here, I will probably remember to get some. 

A Little More

I worked a little on the orphan blocks I want to turn into placemats. Here are four of them. 

I added borders to make them 12” x 18”. 

The forth one took a little more work because I kept making mistakes. 

I still need to quilt them. That’s where the decisions come in. I can put them on the longarm with one large piece of fabric for the back, or I can do straight line quilting on the sewing machine. Either way, I will have to do binding. I can also just layer each placement right sides together with the backing and batting, and sew the edges, leaving a small space to turn the placemat right side out, then add some quilting. The advantage to that method is that it doesn’t require binding, so that’s tempting. I need to make a decision and not let myself get stalled out. This will be an ongoing project, and I will need to make a lot more.

I worked a little more on the kit I found last week. This one:

It’s going slowly, but I have the first row done. 

I have a few more blocks made besides these. Maybe four or five. There are only 16 blocks in the whole quilt, so it won’t be too big. I just want to get it finished.

I have a quilt to get quilted today, but first I need to order a new quilt design for it. I have an idea what I want to do, and don’t have anything in my computer files that match what I want. Tomorrow, I’m taking my stepdad to Lake Jackson for a doctor appointment, so I need to get as much done today as I can.

What I’ve Been Working On

March is here—I’m not quite ready for that! I need to get out my UFO lists and try to see if I made any progress in February. I’m pretty sure I still have one or two January goals I still need to finish. 

A few customer quilts got done this week. 

I also did binding on the first one. I have another quilted that I got trimmed, and I’m in the process of binding it, and there’s another on the frame, so that’s four this week. 

There was a quilt guild meeting on Thursday, and I took some blocks from the “free” table.

We are making placemats this year for Meals on Wheels, and I have plans to turn these orphan blocks into placemats. I will post the progress on these soon.