Weekend Update

Overall, it was not a hugely productive sewing weekend, but since I am less than 2 weeks away from an insurance exam, this is not surprising.

Friday night required some quilting. DD had been sick all day and frankly she was nothing more than a huge pain in the butt. So after a fun adventure at ISU trying to get an ID, I got home and she was asleep taking a nap. So Ted and watched some tivo (Numbers) and after she woke up, I started to sew.

Now I have to make an appreciation table runner for the quilt show co-chair and then I have decided to make 2 more table runners as well for the quilt show silent auction. I figured I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to PP the appreciation table runner (God, how I hate paper piecing!), so I figured I would start my homework on the chiclets.

Somehow, some way before we moved, I made something like 50+ 16-patches for a series of chiclets quilts. Well, the pattern then requires the 16-patches to be framed with a background fabric and some HSTs. Well, making over 400 scrappy HSTs can get a bit tedious! So the project got stuffed into some Ziplocs and shoved in a box and moved.

Fast forward to the move. I took a look at this and decided I had invested too much and that the process was tedious but not hateful and technically the blocks looked good, so I should continue. I decided that I would complete 6 blocks a month until they were all done. So each time I did 6 blocks, I would take a fat eighth and some WOW and make some HSTs using the grid method. Then I would pull out of the existing HST bag and pull enough for 24 HSTs, press, square and sew.

I did indeed do 6 in October and 12 in November during my retreat. I completed 9 on Friday night while watching Gladiator on TNT. It’s not exactly a movie where you need to hear every word and stay riveted to the screen, so it made for good mindless sewing. I got the 9 done and called it an evening. I hope to do the other 9 this coming weekend and then I am done with chiclets for the first quarter of this year.

I have decided that the chiclets will become the TV room/Family room quilt for the couch. So the blocks now have a home, which is good. This will be completely from stash, which is also good. I’m a fan of free quilts.

Saturday involved the MBA orientation, studying a lot and managing DH and DD after they returned from an adventurous trip to Bensenville for a funeral. Let’s just say syrup ended up all over the minivan.

Sunday involved a prolonged morning at church, some football and some studying. No quilting.

It turned out that I couldn’t start on my appreciation table runner at all anyway because the person making the other one wanted to mail me another block and her PP template so that we would be consistent. So it worked out just as well. I want to make the other 2 runners from the scraps of the first, so I just have to wait it out.