Basting

 I just looked over last weeks post, and it seems so much longer than a week ago! I promised myself come August I would get serious about the scooter rally projects and start cutting out the pajama pants for Christmas. This last week of July was my last chance (in my head at least) to work on stuff just because it's what I wanted to do. 

I've been doing well with the FMQ the first hour of my day. I now have three quilts ready for binding. I'm trying to see how many quilts I can quilt in a month, so late August I'll put aside a couple days and machine bind all the quilts I have quilted. I don't usually get a chance to FMQ on DH's days off, but even just doing it on his work days is helping me see progress. 

I was going through the fabric I bought at the thrift store, and realized I had enough of a couple pieces to back some of my smaller quilts. I ended up basting six quilts this week, and three of those were backed from that last thrift store haul. That was worth the $15 right there! 

My goal with the thrift store fabric was to have as little of it as possible go into stash. My drawers that hold fat quarters to one yard pieces have plenty of room in them, so anything those sizes I did stash. Anything larger than a yard, I've already used, and everything smaller than a fat quarter I am cutting up for the scrap user system. I've already processed about half of the smaller pieces. 

I've spent a good part of the last two years busting my scrap user system, and I've done such a good job of using it up, that now when I'm looking for strips in it, I'm not finding what I need. It's time to build it back up again. 

I did get the cloak made for my grandson, but I haven't given it to him yet, so I've got no pics of it yet. I think it came it better than his brothers, which makes sense because I learned a lot making that one. I didn't use a pattern for either one. 

I finished assembling the rag quilt for DS the Younger.

It is too hot to clip seams with the quilt on my lap, so I'm piling it up on the ottoman, sitting at the front edge of my chair, and clipping it that way. It's not great ergonomically, but I just can't handle the quilt on my lap when it's 100 degrees. Rag quilts never look very good until they've been washed a couple times, but I've made enough of them to know it's going to look fine. 

I have a rag die for my studio cutter, but I'm not actually in love with it. You pretty much have to clean the die after every cut, so it this case it's faster to rotary cut the squares. I find sewing the quilt together with the fringe already cut quite fiddly, and no matter how hard I tried I still got fringe caught in the seams. So overall, the cutting and sewing takes longer using the die, but you don't have to clip the seams at the end, so you save time there. I've made a couple rag quilts using the die, but decided to make this one without using it. I've got spring loaded rag scissors, and so far I'm not regretting my decision to do it without the die. Of course, I'm only about 1/4 the way done clipping seams, so I still have time to decide the clipping wasn't worth it! 

Next week I'll be making all the scooter projects DH needs me to make my priority. I also plan to start cutting out pajama pants for Christmas. I'm hoping to get all the pajama pants cut out in August, as well as making good headway on the scooter projects. We'll see, things don't always go as planned.