Why yes, I did use a Lewis Carroll quote for my blog post title this week! It seems to wrap up my life into one sentence with admittedly poor grammar.
My goal in July was to start working on Christmas presents. Technically, I have worked on Christmas presents, but not the ones I was planning on working on, and not one is finished. I have not, however, worked on the projects I had hoped to work on this month.
At first I thought, it's OK, I can dig into Christmas projects in August. Then my August calendar started filling up. And September is filling up fast too. So far, I've got nothing planned for October...sometimes you just have to laugh it off.
I didn't get anything finished this week, but just so you can see a photo of something, here's what I just put on my design wall.
I know I showed these blocks while I was making them, and it's time to assemble them. I need some empty project boxes and if I get this assembled and the borders sewn on, I'll have an empty project box. I usually get stuck on borders because I haven't cut them out, but these are actually cut out, so once I've got the center together and pressed, borders will be quick.
So what else have I done this week? Well, I finished piano key borders to go on a different quilt. I sewed two quilt tops into rows. I started tackling one of the king sized quilts I need to make, and sewed the 9" blocks into fours so now I have 18" blocks. I finished FMQ two quilts, and I'll start on another tomorrow. I haven't put binding on any of those yet, so no finishes, but I'm close. I thought about binding tomorrow, but I'm using the same quilting thread on the next quilt, so I'm opting to just go ahead with quilting another before I switch the machine from FMQ to binding. Oh, I also sewed some units into quilt blocks.
I have a bunch of pressing to do before I can get to the next steps of several of those projects, and it is so hot to be ironing! I'll be FMQ the last quilt I have basted, so I need to get some more quilts basted as well, AND, I have several things that need to be cut out before I can do the next step. I do most of my basting and all of my cutting on my cutting table, and of course right now it's got all kinds of stuff on it because I've been working on so many different things.
I'd really like to get several of the king sized quilts I need to finish assembled, and then I can set up my two 8 ft folding tables in the living room. When I do that, I tend to take over the living room for about a week, and baste as many quilts as I can in that time. As far as king sized quilts go, one needs borders, the inner border is cut, but I haven't finished piecing the outer border. One is partially assembled, getting no border. Two have all the blocks made, no borders. One has all the blocks made, I need to cut setting triangles and a border. One has all the blocks made but I need to cut big sections of background to go between the pieced strips. I have two other king quilts to do, one has the blocks cut but I haven't sewn a stitch or cut the borders, and the other is just kitted and not started at all. That's a LOT of big quilts in my future. I have all the battings for those, and I'll be glad to have the space when all those battings are used.
I've been eyeing 118" wide quilt backing fabrics, because I aim for about 108x108 for a king sized quilt. It's always smaller after quilting, so that size works for me. Missouri Star Quilt Company started carrying the wider quilt backings, but they sell them in 118x108" packs. That makes NO sense to me, if I need the 118 width, I likely need it longer than 108, wouldn't you think??? I used to always buy the 118" wide backings from Fabric.com, but since they got bought out that's not an option. I did a bunch of searching, and I found that Keepsake Quilting had 118x118 backing packs, and they were on sale to boot. I went ahead and ordered all the backings for all of those king sized quilts! Yes, I could have pieced together something, but honestly, when I finish assembling a quilt that large, the last thing I want to do it piece a backing for it. I didn't even look at anything else, because all those quilt backings added up to quite a bit, but I know I'll be thankful I have them. The best part is as soon as the tops are assembled I'll be able to baste them!
I'm not sure what I'll have to show you next week, I start dog-sitting next week, so we'll see!
No comments:
Post a Comment