WIP: Unexciting But Still Progress

Sometimes you have to look for advancement in little things.

I downsized my Halloween pumpkins wall hanging and assembled it.  I decided to leave well enough alone and be finished by NOT changing out the beige pumpkin stems to green ones. I also cut the backing out of this crescent moon fabric.  I think it goes with a Halloween night theme.  I made the binding out of the leftover blues from the Halloween night sky of the wall hanging. You can see a picture of the assembled wall hanging toward the end of my most recent post.

I was clearing surfaces to have a large working area and found this fabric for a child's book.  I was going to make it into a quilt but my daughter-in-law saw it and remarked it would make a very cute book. She pointed out that not all cute fabrics had to be a in a quilt.  I trimmed it up in preparation for sewing it up as a cloth book.  It will be a small project when I want to snatch a bit of time to sew and do not want to be ambitious.

  

I got the courage to trim my doll quilt in order to prepare it for adding the binding. I seem to always get stalled at this step. First, there is the clearing factor. I need to clear an area big enough to lay the quilt out, at least a large enough edge section to be able to trim it.  It is so easy to get sidetracked at this clearing/cleaning stage (hence the aforementioned book).  Second,  there is the courage factor. If you mess up anything while cutting for the piecing stage, you can set your creative juices flowing by finding another fabric to substitute.  If you sew a wrong seam or intersections do not meet quite right at the assembly stage, you can rip it out and do it over.  But trimming that extra batting up and squaring up the quilt(?)  ... one slip of the rotary cutter and there is no recovery.  I took my time and all trimmed well. Actually, I took the opportunity to admire the little FMQ details Mary Ann worked into this doll quilt. I love these little hearts on each doll's front.

Now that I have a space cleared I am going to cut the backing for my Color Play of the Day quilt. I spent the time I could have been cutting and seaming the backing watching the Super Bowl with my husband instead.  I mentioned that the design reminds me of the strategy diagrams in football so this was an appropriate re-direction of my time. It was an exciting game but alas, we are 49er fans, and our team lost.

I finally found my green polka dot extra wide backing to my Grinch quilt,  I'd been going crazy looking for it.  It was not with my extra wide backing fabrics.  I made sure to put it away this time with the rest of the fabrics for the Grinch fabric.

One last thing.  I was using my last machine needle and knew I would be so mad at myself if I broke it late at night or early in the morning when the stores were not open.  I went to my local quilt shop and bought machine needles. No big deal you say? Well, I did NOT buy any more fabric while I was there.  Now THAT is an accomplishment!

Completed projects:  

1. Finally found Grinch backing fabric!!!!  A major accomplishment that had been driving me crazy

Ongoing projects:  

1. Doll quilt - trimmed, awaiting binding
2. Color Play of the Day quilt - cleared space to cut backing
3. Halloween pumpkin wall hanging - backing and binding prepped
4. Grinch quilt - on design wall for assembly and creative sashing solution
5. Christmas stuffed ornaments - on this list as a filler task
6. Scarecrow - on this list as a filler task

New projects:  

1. Baby bunny book

Stats since last WIP post 1/30/13:

     Completed  projects - 1  (not really, but sort of, since it was bugging me)

     New projects - 1 

     Currently in progress - 6