Motivational Monday - progress report

I love WORDS.   And if you love words, check out this cute short video on words.  It's amazing. They only forgot one thing - the total eclipse of the sun which would be pretty cool depicted in words. 

Speaking of the eclipse, I heard on the radio this morning a small clip by Walter Cronkite.  He was reporting on the solar eclipse in 1979. He said in his report that the next eclipse is in 2017. That date would have seemed so far in the future at that time. A lot has happened since that date!

While I had tons of stuff to be working on, I figured that I'm not doing so well on my UFO projects and if I don't start making a dent, the end of the year is going to be here and I'll be lamenting that I didn't get anything done. 

SO with that in mind, here's what I did yesterday. 

I sew the final border on one of the construction quilts. 

Final border on one of the construction quilts

I should say that the strips for the border were cut and joined together, but not pressed and as a matter of fact, they were sadly messed up in a bundle so I had to press everything!

Then I decided to keep plowing on and got the borders on the second of the construction quilts.

Final border on the second construction quilt

I wasn't sure if I had finished one or two of these quilts, but it looks like only one top had been finished so I plowed on to get the border on the last construction quilt. And yes - there are three DIFFERENT quilts - it's not the same quilt three times.

Final border on the third construction quilt

By this time, my allergies were driving me crazy and I needed a break.  Does anyone else find that a snack and a nap seem to clear up the allergies?  Boy - I was thinking retirement would be great so I could snack and nap all the time!

Now some of my UFOs are OK if only the tops get done. At least a quilt top is something that someone could easily take and finish. That is my goal for ALL my projects.  Ah - what a dreamer! But there are some projects that I want to completely finish and these construction quilts are one of those projects.

The backing is fleece - remember that huge laundry basket full of fleece?  One of the pieces was long enough for two quilts so I loaded the entire piece. It was a tad bulky around one of the rollers, but it worked. Just wait until the second quilt gets finished. I had to join three pieces of batting - ugg.  I have to say that my pieces of batting are finally getting depleted!  I'll show you pictures some time.

And one of the quilts got quilted!

One construction quilt - DONE

It's still on the long arm as I will just load another top, add some batting and get the second one quilted. Then I can take it off the long arm. 

Let's just say that I don't like fleece for the backing. It's a pain. The fleece is about 3 inches wider than the quilt, but it sort of shrank up and well - I was glad to get it done, and I'm not excited that there is one more to go!  Perhaps having that much backing wasn't such a good idea?

I also got the binding done for one of the quilts.  I was going to do all four, but when I calculated that I needed to cut 27 strips of fabric, I decided to do one at a time!

Binding for one of the quilts

Amazing how you can put all things work related to the back burner while on vacation and as the weekend progressed, I got to thinking more and more about what had to be done. Yikes - it's going to be a busy week. 

I had a date with my Task Master last night. Checked off a few things that had gotten completed but not marked off. Added the items for this week. A few more that I should add based on the book of deadlines. And here's where the Book of Deadlines (note the capitals - it's now an official name!) comes in handy. I checked that book, saw what needed to be done and I could write the tasks in the Task Master. And there is a quilt that I want to make for next summer. I'll design it. It will go in the Book of Deadlines and then when I review the book weekly, this quilt won't get forgotten and won't get done at the last-minute!  

How is everyone else doing?  I know that it's hard to keep on schedule. Look at me - I'm way off track, but I hope to get back up to date soon and at least I have a list of those projects that I wanted to work on so they will not be forgotten. Let's just hope that some of them take less time than the ones that I've been working on.  Of course, a few minutes here and there will not finish these quilts - a full day will!  Plan and schedule accordingly!

On that note, I'm out of here. 

Ciao!!!