Thursday Night Sewing is Back!

Thursday Night Quilting is back... At least I hope it is back for a long time to come, but we'll see... life seems to get in the way of my hobbies much more than I like, but the kids are only kids once, and it won't be long before I am wishing they were still here keeping me running all over town like an underpaid cab driver.

Of course then I will be able to convert one of their bedrooms to my Man Cave and I'll be able to leave my sewing machine out, all of my fabric will be stored in easy to get to places, I can build my Radio Controlled airplanes that are sitting in the garage unused because I have two boys who would rather play soccer, football, climb mountains or ride bikes than build models.  But I digress...

As I posted earlier this week, I received my Quilting Foot earlier this week so I got to try it out last night, but before I did, I finished the 2011 BOM blocks that I have been working on intermittently for the past year.  I wanted to complete them because I am going to try a new technique with these blocks.  I am going to quilt each individual 12" block before I assemble the quilt.  The sashing will be the "glue" that holds the whole thing together.

So, here are the finished blocks...

I made two extra squares of the November square because
I want to make two pillows to go with the finished quilt.

Now I just need to figure out how I am going to arrange them... Another thing that Man Cave I mentioned earlier will have is a Design Wall!  I am going to electronically play around with arrangement later, but last night I wanted to try out my new Quilting Foot, so I set up the machine and started quilting. 

My new foot installed, thread pulled to the top, nerves wracking over
what I am about to do...  Will I ruin this perfectly good 10"
fabric sandwich?  Or will I somehow not completely destroy it?

WHY do I resist trying something new like I am going to be hurt by not being perfect right out of the gate!?  Why do I always worry that a new skill will just take too long to master?  It's funny, because I ask myself these questions every time I try something new and then I realize, "Hey, I can do this!"

My goal was figure out how fast my hands needed to move to get even stitches.  I wasn't worried about patterns, or how it looked, my ONLY concern was "Figure out how to get a somewhat uniform stitch length."  That's it.  I even resigned myself to the fact that I would not accomplish that on my first night, but by the time I was done, about 90% of my stitches were the same length!  It was encouraging to see how in just a 10" square I went from rather inconsistent to rather consistent.

Now I am not going to lie to you or to myself.  I won't truly be happy until my accuracy is more like 98%, and my designs actually move with a purpose, rather than the hodge podge way this sample does, but I have decided that I am going to cut the rest of the black fabric I have (about 3.5 yards) into 12.5 squares and I am going to start Free Motion Quilting at least one square every time I have my machine out.  And now I can get serious about the 2012 Free Motion Quilt Challenge that I wanted to start in January!  Oh well, better late than never!

Next week I will post some Kitten photos, as you might remember we had kittens 6.5 weeks ago and they are TOO adorable right now, but while I was quilting I was joined by MaryAnna's cat, Leah, who NEVER sticks around while I am quilting.  She hates the ironing board and the sound of the machine, but she stayed all night.  She watched until she fell asleep...

As always, THANKS for reading...

Until Next Time,
Paul