Happy New Year and welcome to 2016

After the hustle and bustle of pre Christmas, I really enjoy the slower pace of the days following Christmas and before the New Year and as I mentioned in previous posts I always find it a time of evaluation and reflection. New Year means different things to different people and for me it is firstly to celebrate my husbands birthday and then secondly it marks the passage of time whilst giving me the opportunity to reassess where I am on my life journey. I enjoy taking stock of where I am on that journey and find it is a good time to think through goals for the coming year and to have a clean out of papers, emails, sort and de clutter areas that I don't usually get to during the year.

I have spent some time in my sewing room rearranging things back into sewing room mode from guest room mode and have started thinking about my top five for 2016. I have made a list of all of my UFO's - this is a very honest list for my eyes only. 

As I was compiling this list I was thumbing through my quilt planning book I use which works well but is seperate from my diary so I decided to create a chart to help me keep on track of my UFO's enabling me to see at a glance where they are all at and what still needs to be done on each one. I have attached this sheet into the front of my diary so I know exactly where it is and I have everything in one place.

I have identified my top priorities and will work on those first. I can now see exactly what needs to be done to get these to the finish line thanks to my chart and I can allocate time in my diary for each step required. 

This forward thinking and planning I find saves me time as I know exactly what needs to be done and generally just do it, otherwise I will sit in my sewing room with no clear direction and wonder what should I work on and not make the most of the precious sewing moments that I have which I find very frustrating. 

I still have some tweaking to do with the organisation in the sewing room but I have spent quite a bit of time in the weeks before Christmas getting things more streamlined and organised as I can't stand not being able to find things when I need them and get very frustrated with the waste of sewing time spent looking for things. The tweaking will happen on a daily basis as I spend more time working on stitching, but as things are getting more organised I am finding that I am enjoying my space more and want to spend more time in there. 

Over the last couple of days while pottering I have put together a couple of book covers for my club planning book and my diary. I enjoyed creating these and used some string pieces that I had already made and I look forward to seeing them both often this year.

That is all for now so until next time, happy stitching everyone.

Donna-Maree

One of my Top Five

Today I decided that I needed to work on something that kept my mind occupied and had decided at the beginning of the week to set aside today for sorting out Home Coming Lane and getting the blocks spread out on my new design boards. It is blocks like these that I thought the boards would be absolutely perfect for and I was not wrong. 

I have been procrastinating about this quilt and always get it so far and then I have to pack it up again and until now I had not found a way to keep it all organised but still ready to work on until now with my new boards.

I spent yesterday afternoon working through what still needs to be done for each block. This pattern is a mix of piecing and appliqué and each block is at different stages. Having the boards means that everything for each block is laid out and all together and I can stack the boards.

Block one, nearly completed just vine below house to do.

Just about all of the appliqué pieces have now been attached to fabric, so the next step is cutting them all out and getting them attached to the backgrounds. This quilt was a kit and it is fun choosing the fabrics for each component. One of the reasons that the boards are really good is I like to have the whole quilt spread out at one time so I can check and see that the colours and fabrics are spread evenly throughout the quilt. I don't have the space for a design wall so these boards are the next best thing. 

Boards with everything laid out and organised.

I was really impressed with the how the cotton batting works holding the pieces in place with no movement, the other thing is I pressed directly on the board. My iron is very small and low wattage and while it gets hot it wasn't too hot for the board. 

Isn't this iron cute? Yes it is real and it does work.

Once I have all the appliqué pieces in place then these can be added to my 'to go' bag. I am really keen to get this one to completion and up on the wall. There are four blocks made up of both the appliqué and the piecing which I am intending to quilt as you go although I haven't thought through yet how I am going to deal with the borders.

Right, this one of the top five is calling me, so happy stitching everyone. 

Donna-Maree