What I’m Working On…

I’ve been busy most every night this week working on something.

This happened….
I finished the November Little Sheep Virtue from Little House Needleworks.  I enjoyed stitching this one.  Everything came together very smoothly.  I ripped out about 6 stitches and that’s it.

I pulled the December one and started stitching on it.  I had the entire top row stitched and found an error.  I had to rip this far back.  
To make matter worse, I started ripping out and had about half of it ripped when the thought to come to my head that I should have ripped it out from the beginning to the point of the error.  I would have only had to rip a tiny bit.  Bummer.  Maybe if it happens again I’ll remember that.

I loaded the Wild Child quilt on Tuesday night and planned to start machine quilting it.

I really want these done before the mystery starts so I need to keep plugging along on them.  About then I started in with a crappy stomach ache.  UGH.  It was only seven at night.  I didn’t feel like machine quilting.  I ended up going to my room and sorted out a pile of quilting magazines I had.  I’m trying not to hoard them. (It’s a struggle not to..seriously)  I still didn’t feel better.  It was 8pm now and to early to go to bed.  I was too lazy to go downstairs and watch television so I went back to the sewing room and pulled a project from the UFO pile.

THIS…Garlic Knots from Bonnie Hunter.  See that tray?  WHAT A MESS.  I think that I put off pulling UFOs because I see the “mess” of it all and don’t want to dig in and sort before I sew.  
Technically I don’t know if this should be called a UFO.  I think it’s more like a cut kit….but that can be a UFO too I guess.  What happened is that Bonnie Hunter released this pattern, I bought it and then a box of batik scraps came in my mail from a blog reader.

It was “the perfect storm”.  I decided rather than find a home for the batiks in my quilting room, I’d cut them immediately into the quilt.  It worked awesome and I highly recommend it.  No real sorting…just cutting.

This is one of those quilts that I can’t just power through and sew a bazillion half square triangles.  This is a quilt that has to be sewn a block or two at a time.  That’s not my favorite thing to do…but I love the finished quilt.  I love the fabric and I love the finished block so I’m going to sew it.

One block and I’m addicted.
I’m a little frustrated with myself as I set this out at my main machine.  It’s the one I bind with and the one that already has two different projects being worked on here.  UGH.

That means one project needs to get finished here so I have room.

I have three machines set up in the sewing room.  The 15-91 Singer is my string block machine.  It’s a powerhouse of the old machines and I love it’s position in the room.  I can see the door like I prefer to and I can see the television should I decide to watch.  My good modern Pfaff is a speed demon of a machine.  I like to do repetitive sewing on this machine…the ba-zillion half square triangles, this baby can process them in no time at all.  The third machine set up is my Singer 99.  I like that machine to but the position in the room I don’t like.  My back is to the television, there isn’t as nice of a work space.  The iron and little table with the wool mat doesn’t reach that far.  I have that on set up for paper piecing.

Anyway…The Garlic Knots quilt isn’t coming out in full force but it is catching a few rays of sunlight.  If I can get a few blocks done now and then, that would be great.  Every block I do is a block closer to a finish.

Wild Child did get quilted on Thursday night.  Binding happened Friday night and pictures got taken Saturday late afternoon and blog post about got written on Sunday….But you all aren’t going to see the details until Friday.  I have to tease you to make sure you want to keep coming back.  HA!  Anyway I love how the quilt turned out and can’t wait to show you.

I have about five ideas on what I want to be working on next but one hasn’t jumped out and made itself the front runner.  Soon I hope.  I’m not too gungho to get deep into something as the mystery starts Friday.  I always get so hyped thinking I won’t have time to sew anything else, but surprisingly I typically do.

Not much sewing will happen here this week.  The kids will start arriving on Wednesday and will stay a few days.  That’s okay…I miss the ones that live further away as I don’t see them as much as the other ones.

I have lots of fun posts coming up in the next week….like Saturday I went to an auction, and there was a white Featherweight on the auction.  But that’s all I’m saying about that until tomorrow morning.