More progress

I've been making significant progress on my priorities. None of my priorities are things I could finish in a weekend, so I'm just trying to keep making progress...move forward. Else I'd likely just sit down amid the chaos.

This is the third Jubilee quilt block. I'm loving these blocks, even though they do take a long time each. I started this one Friday night, feeling sorry for myself and by the time I finished it on Saturday morning, I was feeling happy for myself again. Hard not to be happy working with such bright fabrics. I made a tutorial while I was doing it, but I've also been reading my Judy Mathieson books on Mariner's Compass blocks and found some tweaks that i want to incorporate into my stars and so I'll do a tute on the next block, using those steps. They're steps I've used before, but it's been so long, I just forgot about her method of using freezer paper foundations. The issue I'm having now is that even though I press the fabrics over after a seam, sometimes, they move and when I assemble the block, I end up with a piece that wrinkles because it's slightly too large for it's position. The freezer paper should help me eliminate that as it will hold the fabrics down. And, because you don't sew through the freezer paper, it's easy to peel off.



All that sounds tempting, huh? I really think those extra steps will make these easier and faster going forward.



I finally finished LD's little pink ribbon quilt. It didn't turn out exactly like I would have liked. If I make another, I'll use different fabrics so that the middle band of the ribbon still contrasts with the background. Anyway, it's postcard size and I oulined all three bands of the ribbon and then stippled the heck out of the background and left the border unquilted. I hand sewed the binding down on the way to have lunch with her yesterday.

She's a very special lady. Her cancer diagnosis wasn't as bad as we all feared. She has a remnant of her slow growing breast cancer in her hip (I keep trying to think of a joke about breast cancer in your butt, but am having no luck making this funny). Anyway, she's doing better and they are controlling her pain now and she is more hopeful, more positive, more upbeat and she didn't need either he cane or her walker to get around yesterday, although she did take advantage of two strong men to hang on to.

We all had fun and then it was back home and back to the business of getting ready to move out of the house again. They're supposed to be there tomorrow at 9am with new padding to pull up the carpet, replace some of the pad and re-lay the carpet. I will be glad. I am tired of living out of boxes. I will have a new respect for people that have to do that long term going forward. It sucks. But, now that they're coming, I have finally started to remember to get my clothes out of the garage BEFORE getting in the shower.



I got started quilting the raffle quilt this weekend, too. I got all the securing ditch work done and started to fill these blocks. I'm using invisible thread, which is working great on straight lines, but I quilted little feathers in the pink triangles (that you can't see because the thread is INVISIBLE...what was I thinking about taking a picture?) the tension is all wrong. If I set the top tension low enough to avoid bobbin pop-ups, I end up with tangles of invisible thread on the back where I change directions. There is likely something I could adjust, if I took the time to do it, but this is something I've struggled with through years of trying to use invisible. Instead, I'm just going to use the same thread as the bobbin for these little feathers. That's a very fine dark red and not only will it eliminate my tension problems, it will make my feathers show up. Imagine trying to freehand, free-motion a small feather that you can't see. I'm not surpirised that I'm having trouble trying to keep the quilt moving under the needle. I keep having to stop and readjust my eyes. But, the invisible is perfect for not showing mistakes and that means fast and that means maybe I'll make the internal deadline I've set for mid march to finish this.


Okay, so that's it for me today. Oh, except for a book giveaway. My random number generated 2, making Lucy, qltmom9 the winner. Lucy, send me an address.

Everybody have a wonderful day! Lane