Productivity on the rise!

 

I was on a roll yesterday, and I never did get out on the bike. I was exhausted by dinner time, and I could barely do some stretching, let alone get out on the bike! 

Well, it was a super productive day, and honestly, we need to be careful what we wish for!  

So, I've decided that I need to resurrect The Task Master. What is that? It's simply a notebook where I write down what I need/want to accomplish that week. Why did I resurrect it? I want to be able to see what I've accomplished in the week. I get to the end of the week and wonder what did I do all week? So I wrote down several quilting tasks that need to be done this week or ones that I want to accomplish. 

The Task Master notebook

The trick is to NOT over-commit. I hope I didn't do that on the first week back. I think I was pretty reasonable, and then when I finish something, I get to check it off! That's a glorious feeling. I'll do it for a couple of weeks to get myself back on track, and then I might abandon it again. I do love seeing what I've done in the past weeks. 

It was a busy day at the long arm. First, I got this customer quilt done. I'll be trimming it this morning. 

Customer quilt - DONE

I was on a roll, so I decided to load one of the small flannel quilts that Diane sewed, and I got that quilted as well. It's trimmed and ready to bind. 

Community Projects quilt - DONE

And I wasn't ready to stop there. I had a small project that needed to be quilted, and I was going to do it on my domestic machine, but then I thought - I can get it done quick on the long arm so that one is also done and trimmed. A second small project is on the long arm, ready to go this morning. Can't show you either of them - they're going into a publication. 

So you see why I was exhausted? WAIT -- there's more. 

Here's the deal - we know that we all have so much fabric that we'll never get a chance to sew it all up. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have someone sew for you? Well, I now have TWO people sewing up the community projects stuff. And BOTH of them are good sewists who keep me on my toes to have stuff ready for them. 

I just gave Diane a large laundry basket of stuff, and she's going through that to make kits and eventually quilts. I've no idea what was in that basket. My MIL was bored and ran out of things to sew, so did I have something for her? I gave her three quilts to bind, which she ended up doing by hand. She had 30 pillowcases to make and a string quilt to finish making the blocks. 

As you saw last week, she already finished the binding on the three quilts. I spoke to her yesterday, and she has 23 of the 30 pillowcases done. I'm sure she's finished them now. So I have to get busy and keep stuff prepped for her to sew. She's in her 80's and doesn't have rotary cutting tools, so I do all the cutting. 

Let's just say that all that pillowcase fabric is now cut up! 

I created 22 more complete pillowcase kits. 

Pillowcase kits

And this is all that's left from that large stack of fabrics. 

The leftover bits from cutting pillowcases

And there are still bodies and bands that need to be matched. I'll go through the stash boxes this week to find something that'll work with these. I'll wash the fabric and get it cut later this week. My goal is to have 30 more pillowcases prepped for her. 

Pillowcase bands and bodies

When I cut the other fabrics, I didn't necessarily cut them to the correct length. So I quickly learned that by placing the band on top of the body, I could get both of them cut to the correct length. 

Cutting the band and the body of the pillowcase

There are 15 pillowcases currently prepped and ready to sew. There are another 6 or 7 that are cut but need to be trimmed to the right length. For the remainder of my 30 for this week, I need to search for fabrics. 

My goal is 100 pillowcases, and that's it - I'll be done with pillowcases. So there won't be a pillowcase sewing day this year. Of course, there probably wouldn't have been anyway. 

Here's the scrap box!!!

My scrap box is overflowing again!

So if MIL is going to bind quilts for me, I'd better keep ahead of her. I can't complain because this might be just the incentive I need to get to work on those quilts that Diane has sewn. And I still have more that I made a while back, and those are still waiting to be quilted. I don't even want to know the number of Community Projects quilts that need to be quilted. BUT - this is a good thing - I have the batting for a lot of them, and if I could get those quilts done, it would clear up a HUGE section in that storage room. 

Once I'm done with my project on the long arm today, I'm putting another kid's quilt on it and hope to get that done today. I'll give her three at a time. I dug another string quilt from my retreat box, and instead of finishing the blocks, I'll give it to her. Yikes -- this could be a big deal to keep up with her. 

Does anyone have stuff they want to be sewn?? She's an EXCELLENT seamstress. I do have some clothing fabric that I might pull out and get her to make me some stuff. But, oh boy -- we've created a monster. I have to tell her to slow down that there is NO RUSH for any of this stuff. 

As a treat, I took the girls to the dog park. I don't know why I go, there aren't many dogs there when we arrive, but I think that's OK. Lexi tries to play with the other dogs. Murphy gets jealous and tries to herd everyone, barking at the top of her lungs while she does it. She gets scolded and then doesn't interact with any other dog. Her only goal at the park is to play ball (OK - that's her only goal in life), and she likes to herd other dogs. 

Murphy at the dog park

When we got home, DH had put her food in her dish. The first thing Murphy does when we arrive home is to get to the water dish. She's thirsty because she has worked herself into a frenzy. She had her drink and then came to find me. When we got back to the kitchen, she was staring at her food dish. She WILL NOT touch it until she gets THE command. It's either one word or a little finger wave, and she's good, but she won't budge. Yet, when she starts to eat, she inhales the food. And she knows she has to SIT, or she won't get the command. 

Waiting for THE command

What I want to know is why? Why is this dog so good with the SIT command and waiting for her food, but she has only two speeds when she's on the move - STOP and FAST? And what's with the ball thing? She could play all day and never tire out. 

I decided to go shopping yesterday, so I stopped by the hardware store to get some wood glue to fix my IKEA shelf. NO line-ups although I was fourth in line to pay for my purchase, which was OK. The line went fast. But people - when you are NEXT in line, pay attention. Don't be messing with your phone. 

My wood glue

I'm reading some old issues of Cloth, Paper, Scissors STUDIO magazines. I swear that every fourth studio they show has one of those IKEA tables with the sawhorse legs. It's hilarious. 

Speaking of IKEA, did you know they sell sewing machines??? They may not sell it any longer as I did not see it on the IKJEA website, 

IKEA sewing machine

Well, it's my favorite day of the week - it's MONDAY!! And we get to sew with the Monday sewing group. Yeah - I'm so glad we're on Zoom. It means that I get to quilt on the long arm at the same time, and that saves me a whole lot of time. Plus, I can work on prepping those pillowcases and other things that need to be done, and I couldn't do that if we met in person. 

I did clean up a bit more paperwork yesterday. Not nearly as much as I would have liked, but every paper I deal with is a blessing. It'll all go - it's just going to take time. 

It's a jam-packed week. I've got MANY Zoom calls all week, and I hope to get some sewing and quilting done between them. 

On that note, I'm out of here!!! 

Have a super day!!!

Ciao!!!