Motivational Monday -- one down, three to go!

Good morning everyone!  I feel like I just run a marathon - again!  I wonder how the heck my weekends get so consumed with sewing?  Seriously!  It's not going to get any better until after Market. I might be so tired of sewing that when I get to the next retreat, I'm just going to veg out the entire five days!

There are a few deadline quilts - OK - technically there are four quilts that are due this morning. However, only ONE is actually complete. I do have to sew the sleeve on before it goes in a FedEx box later today. I'll do that a wee bit later.

The one that is ready is a wall hanging and I custom quilted it and I LOVE it.  It looks really sharp and was worth the extra time to do that.  Thank goodness for machine stitching the binding down front and back!  I remade the quilt on the weekend.  I had initially made it, but wasn't happy with the way it turned out because of a teeny tiny little detail.  Redid the top and fixed the teeny detail and the top is WAY WAY better. I'm glad I did that, but it meant having to remake it!  Let's just say that you could easily make this one in a weekend.  It's simple but quite neat.

The second quilt also had to be made. Only parts of it were cut and together. The rest happened over the weekend, the borders went on last night. I was trying to decide if it needs custom quilting - I don't think so. Oh by the way, I should mention that even though the wall hanging was custom quilting, you can't really see the quilting. I wanted the fabric to tell the story, but the quilting provides different textures.  But again as I was quilting, I was learning all kinds of stuff and learning that I'm better than I think I am!  Something that all of us should keep in mind.

So second quilt - top was made but how to quilt it. Then as I was putting the last border on that was a stripe and I had been asked to NOT miter the corners.  OK - that was not my decision and the fabrics are such that you won't really see custom quilting - so it gets an overall pattern tonight.  I have to make the binding but that shouldn't take too long and it also needs a sleeve. It's going to be a busy night tonight!

I also finished the top for the third one on the weekend. The backing and binding need to be made for that so that's a job for tomorrow night.

And the fourth one needs the backing and binding put together.  Oh yes - it's going to be a busy week because I should already be working on the NEXT batch that is due in a couple of weeks.

Sorry - no pictures of any of this. but as I was going along, I was also working on my March UFO and I made great progress.

The pile on the left are COMPLETED blocks!!!   Yeah. The pile on the right are still missing one piece.

Completed block versus uncompleted blocks

I would say that I'm almost half finished!!!   That is super exciting.

I knew that I had not cut enough pieces as I have no idea how many blocks there are.

All the bits I had left 

But I remedied that this morning by cutting some more. Probably will have to cut some more later, but there is enough cut to keep me going for the next week.  I'm getting excited that this is almost finished!!!  Sewing the quilt top together will take no time once the blocks are done.

It was a crazy weekend of cutting as you can imagine. My little scrap bucket on the cutting table was overflowing!

Over flowing scrap bucket

 There is ZERO time to think about pet mats so that bucket just went into the garbage and you know what - I'm OK with that!!!

The bad news is that the scrap bucket is almost full again!!!

I have to say that right now, I'm not really needing the Task Master to get these quilts done because the Deadline book is screaming at me so I know what has to be done and I'm not slacking off. But once I get past this, I'll be back to The Task Master. Actually I need to be paying MORE attention to The Task Master so weekends like this last one don't happen!!!

How is everyone else making out?  The end of the year is looming three months away.  If we don't get everything done - that's OK.  What's important is that we feel like we've made a dent in those projects that we want to get done and gotten rid of the deadwood!!!

It's the start of a new month - sit back and evaluate your plans for the remainder of the year.  I'm still aiming to get all my projects complete.  I know - such a dreamer!!!   But I have a LOT of days off that I need to take before the end of the year so my plan is to take some days here and there and lock myself downstairs and sew on those UFOs!!!

On that note, I'm out of here.

Have a super day!!!

Ciao!