One Step at a Time

My main priority right now is the quilts I have ready to quilt, not piecing a new quilt. The thing is, I know my arm does best when I limit my FMQ time to one hour per day. I can handle some other sewing on top of that, but I haven't cut out any of my new deadline quilts yet, and I don't want to start a brand new project aside from those. So what's a quilter to do?

Well, my solution is going in a couple different directions. My main piecing project right now is actually just assembling UFO's I had at block stage. 

I finished assembling this Crayon box quilt top this week, and I have a second scrappier version mostly assembled too. Once I have a quilt top done, it gets hung in the closet and waits its turn in the quilting queue. I am assembling three quilts right now, and my leader/ender project is a split nine patch that's also a UFO. I don't have to finish a UFO in one go to make progress. Getting a UFO to quilt top stage is an important step. When I have a basting spree, I usually quilt baste until I'm out of pins. It's pretty easy to slip a few UFO's into the quilting queue that way, along with finishing up the deadline quilts. 

My late night project is not a UFO. I'm pretty tired by days end, and I don't want to have to fiddle with making things super accurate, or anything complicated. I've found string blocks are a great way to get in a bit more piecing, without anything taxing. 

I wanted to make Miss S a new quilt, since everyone else in her house is getting a new quilt. I don't have a ton of extra time to work on it, so I decided on a purple/blue string quilt for her. I bought a ream of 8.5x11" newsprint, and I'm just making the blocks that size. I need half the center strips going in one direction diagonally, and half in the other to get diamonds. My method is to make two blocks at once, one in either direction. Some days I'm too tired and don't make any, other days I make two blocks, which is my goal. A couple nights ago I didn't want to work on assembling UFO's so I made six string blocks. There is no deadline for this quilt, I just wanted Miss S to know I've got a new quilt in the works for her. I've got more blocks than this made, I just haven't trimmed the other ones and torn off the paper. 

I'm having a hard time getting myself to cut out the next quilts, so I'll just keep working mostly on UFO's. I'll get them done, one step at a a time.