Friday, August 19, 2016

One of the quilting blogs I read posted a quilting project planner yesterday. It basically has columns for all your quilting projects with a checklist to say at what state they are at – fabric selected, cut, pieced, quilted, and bound. I have a bin full of almost-done quilts and as I was thinking of them I decided to add Finish It Up Friday to my schedule. I’ve worked on quite a few finishes today but didn’t even open that bin.

On Wednesday I finished the tops for three cards so I got those quilted and bound today before lunch. They all need to be hand stitched and I’ll do that either in the morning over coffee or in the evening while watching TV. I can do some work if we are watching the Olympics, but my favourite show at the moment is The Bridge and it is all subtitled so nothing gets done on those nights.

I put together a placemat top at quilting on Tuesday so I found some backing for it and I’ve started quilting it. I saw a photo of a double cross-hatch pattern that I wanted to try but my machine isn’t cooperating and I’ll consider myself lucky if I can manage a single cross-hatch. I’ve changed the needle three times so that isn’t the problem; I’ve fiddled with my tension but that doesn’t seem to be making any difference at all; I’ve changed from a quilting stitch to a utility stitch but it still isn’t as even as I want it to be. Maybe it just needs a rest.

We’ll be heading out later for the annual Blackberry Festival street party. It is an event that the entire town shows up for and from one end of Marine to the other (about four long blocks) it is wall to wall people. As we wander from one end to the other (at least a couple of times) we see all sorts of people and get to sample all sorts of food from vendors as well as lots of music playing up and down the street. There will be fireworks later tonight – we usually watch them from the deck.