Results

I finished my basting spree, and in the end I basted TEN quilts! 

How's that for a pile of basted quilts? Even better, I just finished quilting one this morning. as soon as the binding goes on I'll have a finish! 

I've had a couple people ask me how many pins I have, The answer is a lot, but it didn't happen all at once. All of my pins (and the plastic pin covers) were bought either on sale or with a Joann's coupon. The curved basting pins I like come in packages of 300, but the pin covers I like come in packages of 200. You have to have at least 600 pins for it to even out. I have more than 600 pins though, and most of that is because of the way I work. I tend to do everything in bunches. I'll have a cutting spree and cut several quilts, then a piecing spree, followed by a basting spree and a quilting spree. I'm not a fan of binding so I never save that for doing all at once, as soon as the quilt is quilted it gets a binding. 

There have been a few times that I've had a fast deadline quilt come up, but all my pins are in basted quilts, so I end up buying more. Again, I ended up with a disparity between pins and pin covers, so eventually, I ended up with 1200 pins. I think I actually have a bit more than that even. Overkill? Maybe, but because of the way I work, it still works for me. 

Now that I have a sit down longarm, I don't baste as closely as I did before, because I can keep so much more of the quilt flat when FMQ. That makes the pins I have go further. Also, in these ten basted quilts, The largest is queen sized, and there are two that size, two are twin sized, and the rest are throw or baby quilts. 

Now that I've got a nice pile of quilts ready to quilt (all 10 of which were UFOs), I can make a new plan. I only FMQ one hour per day, because my arm hurts if I do more. When I first cut down to an hour, I felt like quilts would take forever to finish, but I've since realized that if I quilt one hour EVERY day, they actually don't take that long. Even a big quilt can be finished in less than three weeks, and that's with fancier (for me) quilting. 

My arm can handle doing some other sewing, even after quilting an hour, as long as I take a break in between. I have a lot of projects out right now, but what I opted to work on is the zillion Flying Geese I need to make. 

 So far I've got this shoebox full, and that's only about half of what I need to make. I double sew all the corners of the Flying Geese and now I've got a box full of bonus HSTs too.

I'll end up with twice this many HSTs by the time I'm finished all those Flying Geese units. I have several ideas of how to turn the bonus units into another quilt, but I haven't made up my mind which idea I will use. 

Now that ten UFO's are basted, and so many quilt tops are out of the closet, I'm looking at UFO's that need to be assembled into quilt tops. I'm thinking I can assemble at least one quilt as I finish making tops for weighted blankets. 

With that in mind, I put a quilt on the design wall. This is my bright version of Bonnie Hunter's Allietare mystery quilt from a few years ago. Once I have this quilt finished, I will have all the mystery quilts finished, and I can start another mystery quilt guilt-free.

This is the men's shirt version of the Allietare mystery. I finished it last year. I finished all the blocks for both quilts shortly after the mystery ended, I just never got them assembled. I really wanted to do the mystery in two colorways because I love seeing how different they end up.