Suspense

There are times when I feel like I'm writing a suspense novel. Each day, there's a deadline. Will the quilt get finished on time? I leave you hanging until the next day to see what actually happened.

I'm going to make you wait a wee bit longer.

I had my trunk show at Brampton Sew n Serge in the morning from 10 - 12 and then back again for 7 - 9 PM. While it was a nice sized crowd in the evening, there was standing room only in the morning. It was packed!!  But I think everyone enjoyed the lecture/trunk show. It's amazing how many different styles and types of bindings that I've done over the years.

When I first started to quilt, I was told that a quilt is not done until the binding is on by HAND. Well, that mindset quickly went out the window when deadlines loomed. I've learned a lot in the last three years. And now I can get the binding on a quilt in a very short period of time. By short - I mean less than an hour!

It was great to see some familiar faces at Sew n Serge that I haven't seen in a long time. That was very exciting although not enough time to really catch up.

I had a blast and of course, I had to buy a couple of things. No - I'm not going to share my purchase with you at the moment, but when I'm back, I want to do some stitching and then I'll show you.

The question of the day will be "can I function on four hours of sleep?"  YES - the quilt is DONE! The hanging sleeve just needs to be hand stitched in place. I've done it by machine before and I'd better refresh my memory how to do it. I'm good with the progress and the status of the quilt.

But you should have seen me yesterday afternoon and I have to say that a lot of my success (if you call it that) is related to my confidence in what I do. I wish I could share the entire story with you, but you'll have to wait until the quilt gets published. Let's just say that it involved a long arm, an iron, a portable ironing pad, and some applique. It was like playing Twister on a treadmill!  But you know what? It worked out beautifully and I'm super happy with the results.

Let's not forget a HUGE shoutout to Accuquilt for making the prep of those applique pieces so easy - it's like cut and paste in kindergarten. I think I'd better stock up on fusible webbing because I went through copious amounts of it yesterday.

I like to keep my quilts simple and that's what this was. Mind you it was a LOT of extra work. The original quilt was supposed to be 60 by 72, but because of a "slight" design error (on my part), the quilt had to be expanded to 72 by 84. That increased the size of square footage significantly. Don't believe me? The original design was 4,320 square inches or 30 square feet. The second one was 6,048 square inches or 42 square feet. That's a HUGE increase and of course added to the time for sewing, quilting, and binding Bottom line - it's done! That's all we care about.

That leaves five more quilts before the end of the year. Oh - I need to add that quilt to my list. That is finish number 67 for the year. I know - that leaves 33 projects still to finish and there are only two months left in the year. That's the equivalent of one finish every two days. Well, there are lots of things that are very close to being finished. You can bet that I'll be dragging those out to get them done. Lots of bindings to stitch on. Each of those is less than one hour to complete. In one day, I could get a lot done. There are some zippered pouches that just need the bottom stitched up. Those wouldn't take long either. Plus the five quilts that need to be completed soon. So there's hope - a lot of hope that I can get this stuff done.

I'm talking FINISHED projects. There are quite a few that got moved to the "to be quilted" pile and those are NOT counted in this count. I would bet there's at least 25. Heck, I just added 6 to that number the other day. I should count and see how many. Perhaps 25 is too high.

All this focusing is great for audiobooks. I'm almost finished another book. I just plug in those earbuds and then I'm good to go. It's bad!!!

On that note, it's another crazy day and I'd better get myself organized.

Have a super day!!!


Ciao!!!