Shhhh! Don't tell my secret.

I quilted until I actually got burned out. I know, you didn't think that would ever happen. I didn't think it would ever happen. I've always thought I could easily just give up work, and food, and sleep and just quilt. Quilt from morning to night (I'd have to stop at night because without a job, there wouldn't be lights). Quilt, quilt, quilt.

But, I took two days off last week and I had the weekend, and I quilted Thursday from the time Sydney left for school until bedtime. I quilted all day Friday again, but after dinner, I decided I needed to spend some family time, so went to the living room with my seam ripper and pulled out a few mistakes. Got up Saturday, and quilted another 3 hours. Then, we went on our road trip. When we got back, I had to spend a couple of hours cleaning up the sewing room so I'd have some moving around space. I had made a real mess drawing motifs and copying them and tracing. There were pieces of freezer and parchment paper everywhere, and stuff I'd traced from and stuff I'd traced onto. When I was done, I just couldn't put that quilt into the machine again, so I decided to do some piecing. I pulled out the featherweight and made a couple of blocks I was behind on the Block Central BOM for this year and there were a half dozen HST blocks and 25- 9 patches that are going to finish at an inch and a half...yes, that's 9 half inch squares in an inch and a half block. Boy, that was fun...or something near fun (there is heavy sarcasm here. I don't usually do miniatures). And, last night, I made a house block for the Forever Green BOM. And I just couldn't work on any more blocks with tiny pieces, so I decided to pull out my leader/ender triple irish chain that got so far off track earlier this year. There was a good bit of seam ripping for that, and some cutting new pieces to substitute for what I previously considered to be light squares, but I'm back in business on that one and it can go back to being a leader/ender again.

I'm taking a couple days off from quilting now, and hope to get back to that apple themed quilt later this week. It's turning out terrific with just some filler and the borders left to go. I drew a basket of apples and flowers and leaves that I'm quilting into the large triangles. The one I did the other day took two hours to quilt and another hour to pull out all the parchment paper. I know what I'm quilting into the narrow inner border, but only have a vague plan for the wider outer border. But, if my brain keeps working like it has so far, I'll have a full fledged plan by the time I need it.

My machines have definitely had a workout. I'd like to oil them tonight and let them sit for a couple of days. And, let me sit for a couple of days to recover from my little quilting vacation. Ain't it always the way? You need to rest up after "resting up". See ya'. Lane