My Weekend

I guess my week-end starts on Friday. Friday morning the Needle Turners Bee met. There are six of us in the Bee. It is small, but a nice group of ladies, and I enjoy getting together with them once a month. It was started has a hand applique bee, but we occasionally work on other hand projects.

After the bee meeting, Sandra and I went to Hancock's in Rome. I got all the fabric that I needed to fulfill my obligation to the AQG birthday club for the entire year. I found a really pretty Oriental fabric and a batik that I like for those that have specified those fabrics. Hope they won't mind all getting the same fabric. I found a small novelty print on a yellow back ground for another quilt project that I will be starting as soon as I complete the I Spy quilt. It is a big sister quilt to go with the baby quilt. I also got six zippers to make mesh bags for my Needle Turners bee members for next Christmas. That is, if something doesn't happen between now and then to change my mind. I thought I did very good on my shopping trip, didn't get carried away and spend more money than I had in my wallet to pay for it and actually stuck to my list for a change. Believe me, that was hard to do, they have a good inventory reduction sale going on and there were lots of pretty fabrics I would have like to have gotten.

I wish I could go back to Hancock's this week, I still have a 40% off coupon that starts on the 15th. I did use my coupons for the 11th. I've been thinking I may have to re-think one of my fabric choices for the big sister quilt. I really needed a blue, pink, purple and green for the rail fence blocks, but instead of the green, I choice a print on a light background that had mostly purple with some green and blue. I'm thinking that will be too much purple. I was thinking I could use my 40% off fabric for that or they had some cute horse prints that would work for the back. Purple and pink, butterflies and horses, is what I have to build a quilt from. There are no horses in the top, butterflies, yes. I found a cute pattern in the May 2007 issue of Quick Quilts that I'm going to use.

I think I'll start making lists to keep on track. I hate lists! Whenever I've made them before, they end up being so long that it is frustrating and I get so overwhelmed that I end up abandoning the list. This time I'm going to try shorter daily lists and also start lists for two or three days out. That way I will only put on any one list only what I can reasonably accomplish in one day, things that are a lower priority can go on a list for another day or on the master list that I hate so much. The master list will help me remember important projects and dead lines and I can use it to compile, and prioritize the items on the daily lists. The problem that I have, is whatever project I happen to be thinking about at the moment becomes the most important, even though I may have other things that really need to be completed first. I made my first list yesterday and it went really well, I got to everything on the list except one, and I rolled it over till today, which is OK as long as it isn't more than one or two. The only disappointing part was, that by the time I did the other things on my list, I didn't get to work on the I Spy quilt as much as I'd liked to have. I only got two rows of blocks sewn together. That will be on by list daily until it is done.

Against my better judgement, I decided to start a new, low priority project. I've justified it by:

1. The project calls for 1-1/2" and 2" strips and 3-1/2" squares. Well I just happen to have these laying around waiting for a project to use them in. Duh, here is a project, a mystery quilt, and I love mysteries.

2. I will piece this project as beginners and enders while working on more important projects. I will totally ignore the fact that I will most likely spend more time sewing the beginners and enders than the actual project that I'm supposed to be working on and the fact that it will take me three times as long to complete my real project.

I do beginners and enders now. I piece scrap blocks and keep a tub of 8-1/2" long strips beside me for this.

Here are some of the scrap blocks that I have pieced as beginner and enders.