Twelve hours in August...

     Now that wedding plans are a thing of the past, I've entered an idyllic part of summer with no real plans and few responsibilities. Furthermore, Mr. SFO is away for the day, so I decided to treat myself to an entire day of sewing! Maybe you're at a stage in life where this is the impossible dream-- I was once in that situation with a full-time job and two kids running around the house. I promise, you will get there! Until you can have one of your own, share mine... I'm going to document my day from start to finish.

     I love a list! It's so satisfying to find one under a pile of papers weeks later and find you actually finished a couple of items. This list, however, I intend to keep in front of me all day and try to check off a few finishes I really want before the summer ends. 

1. Finish the Brick House Binding
2. Add the final border to the Mod Flower Box
3. Prep backing for Mod Flower Box
4. Sew together Let's Pop Some Corn Pillows and Backings
5. Mail out to Sara (my beloved Longarmer)
6. Make bindings for both Liberty Box Flags and stitch on.
7. Cut Sweet Acres table runner into an oval, make, and stitch on binding
8. Sandwich the Fruit Cocktail table runner for quilting
9. Make Summer Memories Baskets 

How far do you think I'll get,? With uber focus, I'm hoping to get at least some of #6 done. Lets go!

6:30 am. Up and at 'em! There's nothing like a day of sewing to motivate you to get out of bed. I always start the day with a cuppa tea and needle in hand for a little hand stitch. The Brick House quilt made with March's Sew Sampler fabric had about two sides left on the binding to hand stitch-- I have all day, but it's done by 8:30. Okay, it took two cups of tea. CHECK! This is a nice size piece-- I'm gifting it for my nephew's wedding in a couple of weeks.

8:30 am. I guess I'm too self-congratulatory and I already went sideways! Instead of moving to #2, I got distracted with my Summer Memories Flower Baskets. I spent an hour ironing and then trimming up HSTs that were lying around from last night. I am so mad at myself for succumbing to this detailed quilt-- 64 basket blocks!

     I got sucked in when the July Sew Sampler box had the perfect red, white, and blue jolly bar-- then, I realized I needed a second one, and now it appears I'll need a third one to finish all 64 baskets. So I'm about $100 into this project. The Sew Sampler Challenge to complete all 12 boxes this year is starting to get a bit expensive... I already have a hint the August box is not fabric I love, so I'm really determined to make something cheap and easy when it arrives-- I just got billed.

The Summer Memories baskets are coming out super cute, however-- I don't think I'll regret it. It seems like at least one Sew Sampler project this year should be a full size quilt-- and this is a beauty. Come back over August and September, and you can see if I'm making progress.

9:30 am. Focus, people! Actually it's time for breakfast. The chickens have been laying 7-10 eggs a day-- Mr. SFO and I have tried to keep up to no avail. It's three eggs and a slice of toast. I then take out a treat for my beautiful birds-- a squishy peach. They love me.

10:00 am. Once a week, my ol' quilty buddies from the last house and I do a ZOOM call. Lainey has two beautiful finishes-- Tere is gluing something. My tribe. >3 The calls really keep me going, now that I live in the boonies. We share our progress on stuff and a bit of wedding gossip for an hour. It's fabulous. See you next week, besties!

11:00 am. Goodness, gracious, time to get back to my list. #2 and #3 are really the same project--I realize a big time waster is going to be finding the backing fabric I purchased-- the entire house was "cleaned" for wedding company-- not good! I was able to find it quick enough. The "Mod Flower Box," redubbed the "Mod Berry Box" needs one set of super wide borders. I had to order more fabric, but it's here. No more excuses! One thing I hate is measuring for them-- you can see here, that the top and bottom of the quilt are off about a 1/4."

I split the difference, like you are supposed to, and then proceed to sew wrong sides together!

(The pretty manicure is a wedding leftover-- I'm not a girlie girl, but I could get used to it! So much nicer for photography.) At this point, I'm just getting frustrated with progress-- I power through and get three borders done before I'm starving for lunch. 

1:00 pm Back on the job. I finally get my last 6" border on. I really LOVE this thing. A very quick stitch, if you don't mind a few curves.

It's a respectable 50" x 50"-- I'm trying to think of a super dramatic place to hang it.

1:30 pm. Time to sew up a backing for it. I like to use a fabric from the same designer-- it's Camille Roskelley, but the "Sunnyside" options were a bit sold out. I found this from her "Dwell" collection at a LQS-- not totally my taste, but I do like to shop local. I honestly don't have much bigger than a fat quarter in my stash, so purchasing backings is always a major expense when finishing things. It's another detested task to cut 3 yds. in half and resew them the other way, and takes me a good hour and a half. Ready for quilting! 

3:00pm On to task #4! "Let's Pop Some Corn" was finished in January, and I promised myself it would be on my table by the fall. Not only on my table, but I also made a couple extra blocks for pillows-- my living room is gonna look fantastic! I want all these pieces quilted, even the pillow backings, so to be cost efficient, Sara the long armer advised me to sew the pillows and backings, four pieces, into one "quilt" and then cut them apart when I get them back. Smart, huh! Then I also need to piece a muslin backing for all of this. Fortunately, the tablerunner part is ready to go.

4:30pm An hour and half later, much musing has occurred about how much work and time it is to drag these quilt-y projects over the finish line-- just as much time as constructing a top. Here are my two pillows sewn together with a piece of fabric to make pillow backings. I want a really substantial pillow and the blocks are about 20" x 20" so the entire piece is about the size of a good throw. These large pieces get heavy and are super tough to measure-- I have a large table, and I'm not sure I'd know how to do it without one.

5:30pm I'm really "over" sewing large pieces together at this point. So the piece above is getting backed with muslin-- it will never be seen. The muslin I bought is 48" wide-- my long armer likes 4" all around, and it's a bit skimpy. I'm going with it, so let's hope she doesn't notice! This took me an hour, because I still had to cut it end to end and square it, and I wasted a lot of time thinking about whether or not I should add a strip to make it wider. I thought about it for longer than it probably would have taken to do.

Once in a great while, I like to throw out a tip amongst the blather to keep you coming back--heehee. So don't make a quilt that has both sides longer than 36." Why? Because fabrics are 44" wide, and if your long armer needs 4" more on each side, you are going to have to buy double the length and sew it together! It's a huge waste of fabric and pricey as well. So I haven't ever bought any of those 108" wides, but I'd sure look into it for a bed quilt. "My Ribbon Runs Through It" top is still hanging around-- I have to piece three giant pieces together for the back... that's gonna be an all day job!

6:30pm Dinner time-- I have to admit I'm really getting tired. I made up a package of ramen-- a guilty pleasure I can only enjoy when Mr. SFO is away. A little TV watching-- we love Turner Classic movies, and we recorded the dumbest movie, "Random Harvest," where a guy loses his memory and forgets he has a wife and baby. (Amnesia and time travel are two of my favorite plot mechanisms.) Anyway, the wife coincidentally finds him 12 years later and he doesn't recognize her. She decides not to tell him who she is-- she wants him to fall in love with her all over again. Plot holes abound, but the gowns are gorgeous. An hour in, and I'm still waiting for him to get another blow to the head and wake up. Time to move on.

7:30pm-- Gonna try to get another couple hours in. I did say get to #6, and I do need my next hand stitching job for tomorrow morning. First to find the binding fabric! That took a half hour. Sometimes if you order yardage from Fat Quarter Shop-- they fold it all up together-- it was wrapped inside some white snowflake yardage I bought.

I cut my binding strips to 2-1/4 for these smaller projects. 2-1/2" is a bit wide. I also don't fuss with diagonal joins-- especially here with a stripe-- okay, it's less bulky, but why start piecing diagonals when a piece is all right angles? You can also get some really bad, jarring joins, depending on the fabric, like this:

I can see that if I just sew in the middle of a stripe, the seams will even disappear.

How sexy is that?

I do trim the joins to 1/4" when done, for less bulk. Then I was able to stitch one on to one of my Liberty Box flags... 

it is now...

9:30pm and I'm officially calling it quittin' time! I got a lot of "grunt" work done today to FFO some of my finished tops-- I feel totally accomplished, but I think my next day of sewing will be more of a fun, piecing one... I'm thinking of a new blog series-- "Twelve hours in September!" It was so motivating to do this, I think I will just make it a monthly thing. 

Still there? Thanks sew much for spending the day with me-- I hope you leave feeling inspired to make a list and spend a day working your own projects forward, or if you don't have that, it's amazing what 15 minutes here and there will do. Be sure to take progress shots of your work-- it is extremely gratifying to see things coming along. 

Nitey nite!

xox

Carol