A Little Sewing Can Go a Long Way

 I've been trying so hard to be good and take lots of sewing breaks. Today I overdid it, but so far I can still lift my arm and the rest of this week I have smaller goals, so I think I'll be OK. 

I said I was only going to work on DD#2's birthday/Christmas quilt, and although that has definitely been my main project, I have worked on a couple others. 

The thing about DD#2's quilt is it was always the plan for us to have mostly matching quilts. I was originally going to use different patterns for each quilt, but the same fabrics. When I decided to use the same block pattern for both quilts, it just made sense to make all the blocks at once. 

I have all the blocks for both quilts done, and when I went to cut sashing, well, I cut those for both quilts too. When I was assembling the quilt top on hers, it didn't seem much more work to assemble the center of mine right after, and when I just pressed the fabric for the inner border, I figured I may as well cut that for both quilts as well. 

DD#2's quilt center is done, but needs pressing. Mine is just in rows, but needs pressing. Tomorrow's goal is to get both borders on DD#2's quilt top, then I can baste it this weekend. How far I'll get on mine I don't know. The outer border on DD#2's quilt will be the larger border from the border stripe fabric in the Steampunk Christmas line. I only have enough of that to do one quilt. The border stripe fabric also has a smaller stripe I could use for mine, but I'm thinking I'd rather save it for table runners I'm making out the leftover fabrics. I had purchased some Christmas fabric last year to use for borders on some Christmas table runners that didn't get made, so I'm thinking one of those will work for borders on my quilt. The inner border is just the same as the sashing fabric on both quilts. 

Aside from these Christmas quilts, I am completely caught up on the temperature quilt, and I even assembled January-August.

I showed the photo to DH and my sister, and they were both surprised it wasn't all red in the summer months, and this summer has been brutal. I told them I didn't want a month all one color, which I why I opted to start my temps at 32 degrees F, and then go in just 4 degree increments. Since I used so many colors, over 20, my lightest green actually goes up to 72 degrees. I also added pinks between the oranges and reds, to add even more variety. I had a VERY dark red that I would have used for 113+, but thankfully, I never needed to use it. We did hit 112 though. September's column can't be added until it's done, but we're seeing fewer reds for highs and more greens on the lows now. I'm very glad I decided to point the Flying Geese unit down when we have rain or snow, because it does add interest to the design. You can tell we live in a desert though, not that many down units!

I was almost caught up on the temperature quilt last week before my arm gave out, so it didn't take much sewing to get the completed columns sewn together. 

I was at a fabric store this week, and I saw a woman trying to choose quilting thread. I was enthralled while watching her, mostly because I would never have considered any of the colors she was agonizing over. She seemed to be set on choosing a neutral color, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. She had two of her main fabrics with her, and they both had the same robin eggs blue in it, and I totally would have gone that direction. Of course, I've done weird things like quilt a quilt with orange thread that had no orange fabric in it, and all kinds of people would have questioned my taste on that one. I'm not questioning her taste or her decision making process. She should quilt with whichever thread speaks to her. I am just a rules are made to be broken kind of quilter. I love Jordan Fabrics YouTube videos, and I've made a couple of the quilts she's done tutorials on. I rarely agree with her quilting thread choice. I love listening to her reasoning, and I get that she doesn't want it to show. Sometimes I chose something calm to recede into the background too, but I often want the quilting to show, so I make a wild choice. Quilting with a really dark color on a quilt with a white background, I've done it. Quilting with a really light color on a quilt with a black background, yes, I've done that too! Sometimes some wild color choices on a solid fabric can make the fabric look printed instead of solid. I like going really unexpected sometimes. My point is, make the quilts YOU want to make. If you want to stick with neutrals, by all means, go right ahead. On the other hand, if you really want to go wild with a thread choice, that's perfectly OK too. I do both, depending on the project and my mood at the time. Sometimes I've even just decided by, hey, this a small project and I think I'll have just enough left of thread X to get the job done. Or more often, I'd like to use this color but I don't have enough to quilt a quilt this large so I'll use thread Y instead. 

Sometimes I wish I was a little more predictable of a quilter. I see people like Lori Holt and Sugaridoo, always using the same color palettes, and I think maybe if I could just choose a color palette I could greatly reduce my stash. In reality, I enjoy playing with all of it, switching up the color palette, switching between traditional quilting and modern, simple patterns and patterns with seemingly a zillion pieces, going between FMQ, walking foot quilting, and ruler quilting. I'm going to have to reduce my stash by sewing it up, the long way!