Yes - I know it's Motivational Monday and I'll get to that in a second.
Let's just say that I found an excellent use for the leaf blower. You do remember me mentioning the leaf blower (still in the box) that's currently sitting in my kitchen.
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| Brand new leaf blower in the kitchen |
Let's say that a certain someone needs a haircut. No - that's NOT me. But a certain someone who LOVES to roll in the leaves, run through the leaves and lie down in the leaves and then has the nasty habit of bringing those leaves into the house because her fur is COVERED with leaves!
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| Leaves in the kitchen |
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| And more leaf bits |
Yesterday was another sewing MARATHON. Seriously, I've never had this kind of focus at the sewing machine in my life! I got home from class on Saturday and furiously worked on piecing the blocks and did so for five hours.
Then up early on Sunday morning and back to the sewing machine. I had set goals for myself. Mental ones as there is ZERO time to be writing them in The Task Master. This component of the blocks needs to be done by 9 AM. This component needs to be done by 10 AM - that sort of thing. So technically, it's like the taskmaster, but in my head and there is NO DANGER of forgetting.
As I was piecing the blocks, I also starting to assemble the rows of the quilt. So by the time I finished piecing the blocks, the entire quilt was almost together. I did have to make two extra blocks as I had miscounted on a couple of the components. No worries, it all went together very nicely.
I have NOT worked on a big quilt in a while and I was finding it cumbersome to work on as I did the last part. But not to worry, there is no time to complain - just keep sewing!
I had cut the backing a couple of days prior and so I whipped those pieces together and went to load on the long arm. Now I was really hoping to be loading the quilt around noon, but you all know how realistic that is. I think I ended up loading it around 3 PM. No big deal. EXCEPT!!!!! When I went to measure the top, it was FIVE whole inches larger than I had anticipated. Why? Because I had taken the measurement off of my diagram and NOT the quilt (because it wasn't together then). Then I realized that the diagram had used 1" sashing and in fact, it was supposed to be 2".
Oh boy - this is going to cause some problems. So I "stretched" that backing a wee bit and I didn't have much room on either side as you can see below.
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| Less than 1" along one side of the backing |
The backing was made with three lengths of fabric and I knew when I joined two of them that one piece was a wee bit smaller than the others and sure enough, the backing was short in the corner!
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| Missing a wee bit of backing |
To recap, I started to sew this quilt (it was all cut and marked) at 5 PM on Saturday. There are 36 blocks in the quilt - each block has 17 pieces in it. Lots of trimming for each block, each block had two partial seams and required squaring up twice. The quilt is done! I finished it last night and was sewing the bias binding on, but I had to stop around 9:30 as my neck was killing me. Well - it wasn't that bad, but I knew I had to stop. The sleeve is almost ready to hand stitch on. I need about one-half hour to finish the binding which I'll do tonight.
BTW - did I mention that the quilt is 87 inches square? I'm an idiot!!! There is no other way to say it!
But I'm not done - there are still three full days before we leave for Market and I've got a few things yet to complete. I did manage to rejig the wonky handles for the tote bag and no one will be the wiser about that! They just need to be stitched.
This is my cutting mat this morning. I'm rather loving having all this space on that mat and will aim to keep it clear like this going forward.
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| Cutting mat this morning |
There is a wee bit of cutting on the next project and I hope to make some major progress on that one tonight.
On that note, I'm out of here to clear up some paperwork so I can hit the sewing machine running!
Have a super day!!!!
Ciao!
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