Peg at Happy in Quilting has issued a challenge to finish 5 projects before the end of July. I've got one done today. With my recent basting frenzy, I should be on track to finish that many by the deadline. After today's finish, I still have three quilts basted and waiting patiently for quilting.I quilted the starfish quilt today! Small quilts get finished so much faster than big ones. Do you think I could convince the kids to sleep in really tiny beds? I used a free form wave shape that is supposed to suggest water. Then in the sea urchin squares, I outlined each of the little shapes. I tried quilting some words in the two extra borders, it was harder than I thought. Detail work like that is when a stitch regulator would come in handy. I'm in envy of Amy's new machine which is one step up from mine, and came with the works. Still, how often do I need to write out holuthuroidea in quilting stitches? (I know I'm a total nerd -- no need to comment on that :). The only part I couldn't figure out was how to dot the i's and cross the t's (literally). So I picked up some little glass beads that should do the trick. I usually avoid anything dimensional in quilting and scrap booking, but this is definitely a wall quilt, so I'll go out on a limb.
I had plenty of time this evening that I could have sewed down the binding and finished the handwork, but I was going a little stir crazy and escaped from the house for a while. The kids do fairly well for a while with nothing structured going on, but by the end of the week we were all a little grumpy. We had already done most of our regular summer outings earlier in the week, so today was a home day. There aren't many weeks when we don't have SOMETHING scheduled, this just happened to be one of them. So I took a field trip to Joan's fabric and checked out their new line of Legacy quilt fabric. I didn't buy much, because I'm trying to finish projects right now, not start new ones. I did get a yard of fabric called "running eighths" It has 8 different coordinated patterns all printed on the same piece of fabric. It seems like a nice way to get a variety of prints without having to buy a ton of fabric. I also used my coupon to get a ruler holder which then motivated me to spend some time tidying up. I have everything ironed and put away now, except the current works in progress. I'm in a class next week, Anna is flying to visit her grandmother, Ryan is in Chess camp and Sydney will be in school all day. I'm guessing I won't have as much time for quilting, so getting things picked up a little bit seemed like a good idea.
2 comments:
Your echino-thingy quilt looks great. Will you get the chance to make the others in the set that you were thinking of doing? I so remember the school holidays when my boys were young, we used to alternate days out with days at home and that seemed to work - they started to build up ideas for themselves then.
I'm very guilty on not having enough "outings" for the girls. At least the two older ones are in summer school to keep them busy, and I try to do something with Candace outside everyday---doesn't always work out though.
Thanks for sharing the goal of finishing 5 projects before the end of July. I didn't realize I had so many UFO's lying around!
And----you're a hoot! I love the statement about wishing people sleeping in smaller beds! That's halarious! And (as Amanda called it) that "echino-thingy" turned out great! The quilting looks super from the pics :0)
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