I’m not sure what happened but I checked my calendar today and somehow it’s now Wednesday.
I’ve been writing a blog for several years now and I do have a plan of action for each week’s post. I normally keep a list of topics I want to explore in the notes app of my iPhone. This list covers everything from quilters I want to interview to things that inspire me to quilting problems I have faced down and solved.
I pick three topics and begin to write on all three, starting and stopping until they’re finished. I normally always have three weeks’ worth of posts “in the can” at any given time. Sometimes it’s more but never fewer than three. The weekend before the blog post on Thursday, I take the pictures and edit them. They are then loaded up into my media files on WordPress. Generally, no later than Tuesdays about lunch time, I have this week’s blog completed and after an additional round of editing on Wednesday it’s loaded up and scheduled to post on Thursdays as soon as I turn on my laptop.
But if you’re a regular reader, you know that my life has been the perfect storm for the entire month of January. Between no heat, home renovations, stomach flu, and bad colds, I’m just proud of the fact that I haven’t missed a weekly post.
However, I have depleted my backlog. Hence, my dismay when I looked at the calendar today, realized it’s Wednesday, and the “can” is empty. So, this week’s blog post is simply a show and tell of what I’ve done in my studio this week. I have a couple of very serious handwork projects going on at the moment, but I am not ready to show those at this point.
In January, I set some goals for my studio. One of these goals was to go through all of my thread, separate it, discard the old thread, sort it by hand piecing/hand applique thread, colored machine thread, and regular piecing thread – then come up with a better storage system. Until now, all of applique thread (both hand and machine) was stored in a spare project box. While that did keep it all together, it was difficult to see exactly what I had. I decided to invest in three of these boxes:
Not terribly expensive, these can be found at Joann’s and of course through Amazon. These make it easy to see everything that I have. I have my hand sewing thread in one of these and the rest of the thread in two additional ones. The only spools that do not next inside these boxes are my Superior Thread machine applique thread and my larger spools from Connecting Threads.
Not only did it make my thread easier to see, I also got rid of some super old stuff. Thread does have a shelf life, and although today’s thread remains viable for a number of years, eventually like everything else, it will show its age and begin to break as it’s fed through the machine. If it’s older than 10 years or so, toss it.
At the beginning of 2018, my guild’s new first vice-president, Matthew Emerson, issued a challenge. This challenge is to make a small quilt/quilt block, approximately 12-inches square, finished. Do one for each month of the year and bring to the guild meetings to show off.
The only thing I could think of when Matthew issued the challenge was “What fun!” Several months before Dragonfly closed, I purchased a tabletop quilt frame from the store but had yet to make a single quilt to put on it. By the end of the year, I’ll have a dozen. This is what I came up with for February.
I planned. Honestly, I did. But sometimes even when you’re paying attention to the details and the basics, making your work as excellent as possible…stuff like this happens. I know this picture is poor quality, but can you see what happened?
YUP. A binding seam showed up at the corner. Oy-vey. But I managed to get my way through it without too much trouble.
I already have March’s small quilt laid out on paper. And I know what I’m pretty sure I’ll be designing for April and May.
Until next week…Quilt with Excellence!
Love and Stitches,
Sherri and Sam
