Sometimes it gets difficult to balance all the things that are important to me. I just love too many things in life and sometimes I get myself overloaded trying to balance it all. That’s when I have to start prioritizing what’s really important to me.
First and foremost is my faith and my relationship with God. Everything after that is a juggling act. My passion for quilting sometimes clouds the rest of the priorities. I totally get lost in my sewing room and could possibly not surface for days. But then work would frown on that, my friends would worry about me and eventually, I would get hungry. So, there you go, I have to create a balance where I am happy in the zone, have time for church, job and friends. I’m getting better at it. I’m not a total recluse anymore, just a partial one. But it does take practice. Just like it takes practice to achieve skills for applique, paper piecing, machine piecing, hand quilting, machine quilting. I hear often from non quilty folk , ” Oh I could never do that”. The answer is yes, you can.
This month’s to do list is almost complete. Feeling pretty good about it. I’m still working on prepping Month 3 of the Bed & Roses BOM. I prep it at home, but can only hand sew on it away from home like lunch time at work, or while waiting for my car to be serviced, sitting at Dr’s office. you get the idea, anyplace but at home. At home has it own projects thus the balancing act. At the rate I’m going, the hand sewing may take me 2 years. 😦 That’s okay, it just means that all the other projects I have going on will get completed and not become UFO’s.
I’m working on Month 8 BOM of Long Time Gone by Jen Kingwell. I have completed the blocks below and have yet to finish 4 paper pieced pineapple blocks that measure 5″. Yeah, really tiny. I’m trying to be creative and make it my own. I’m thinking where the 4 squares some together I would like those spokes of the pineapple block to be blues. I still haven’t decided what the center square should be. The rest of the block will be scrappy.
Of course no project is complete without the QA approving it. Here is the QA supervisor Tink telling me I have spent way too much time prepping the A Boy and A Girl top border. Breaktime….. well Tink time. 🙂
I have also been prepping Month 3 of Bed of Roses by Sue Garman I have been working on this for 2 weekends in a row. Just the other half of the set in triangle to prep and I’m done til next month. I did something different this time. I made mirror photocopies of the pieces and cut them out and pasted them to an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper and marked them left/right. I then photocopied them onto 8.5 x11 freezer paper sheets. Then I used regular freezer paper and ironed them together doubling up to strengthen the paper. I only had to cut them out and iron them to the wrong side of the fabric and start prepping. Since I have 8 blocks of these to complete it will save me quite a bit of time tracing each piece every month. I would like to take credit for this idea, but I can’t. I read about it somewhere and thought, that’s a great idea, I’m going to have to try it. Well I did and it’s still a great idea. And I have to admit, a better finished product than my hand tracing. The pieces once prepped actually fit into the blue traced lines. Imagine that. They didn’t always before, just sometimes.
I have my Saturday sampler blocks all made. November 3, is our last meeting for this year. So it will be crunch time and I will have to squeeze in finishing that quilt top. No new UFO’s. Silly me, I signed up for both options this year. So that means I have 2 quilt tops to finish before January. I WILL NOT do that again. Just signing up for one for next year. I promise.
Back to prepping the other half of the block. Then onto the tiny pineapple blocks.
Happy Stitches Everyone
Sissy Malone
Appliquenut 