Monday, March 16, 2020

My sewing restarts - my Moda Choose Your Own Adventure Quilt Along quilt

I don't think that most blogger who finds that it's been multiple months since they last posted really intended that.  I certainly didn't.  In my case, life just got crazy busy and I didn't have the motivation to sew much.

There were some customer quilts that were completed in recent months and I'll be sharing photos of those in upcoming posts.  The biggest thing for me is that my other commitments have eased up a bit so I've gotten back into my studio.  After a day cleaning, reorganizing a little and generally sorting through the stuff that just got dumped in there over the past months, I felt a renewed energy to get back to the craft that brings me so much joy.

The itch to start a new project was strong but I resisted and instead decided to get back to another special quilt and get it finished.  This is where I left off at the end of July 2018 with Moda's Choose Your Own Adventure Quilt Along.
Thankfully 3 of the 4 needed arrows were already done so I had to sew the last one and the Flying Geese before I could attach the last border for this round.  I'm really glad that I planned out the color placement and took pictures back then for this last bit so I didn't have to rework that side.

Next up was the 4th border which is now added.  I initally used the orange print on 2 sides before I realized that it didn't seem right.  I hadn't taken notes about what colors I had planned for each border but I knew that the orange print didn't feel right so I switched to the blue.
 I spent an afternoon over the weekend cutting the pieces for the next round of blocks.  Working out the color and print combos took more time than actually cutting the pieces.
A few customer quilts are also waiting in the que so I'm going to alternate in the coming days and weeks between my own sewing and longarm quilting to finish those up.  My lower back and knees aren't too happy if I stand for too many hours quilting anyway so this plan will help with that too.  

With my kids home from school for this week (and very likely longer) we're going to also work on some outside projects like cleaning up the garden beds in preparation for planting in the spring and the annual garage clean out.  Our Girl Scout cookie season is completely up in the air at the moment (cookies were scheduled to arrive this Saturday) and I know that our council is working around the clock to figure out what will happen.  We just have to be patient, knowing that it will all get worked out at some point.