Vacation Projects

Tomorrow is the first day of May and I’m planning to take this vacation seriously!  My number of projects in progress has grown so enormous over the last few months that it’s quite overwhelming, so this month I’m going to make a big stab at getting the following projects closer to finished.

No, they may not be completely done by the end, but they will hopefully be a lot more solid than they are now!

One major project I’ve been wanting to tackle is my KING sized quilt.  Why do I always write KING in caps?  I think it’s because that quilt is just so darn BIG!

Of course, it doesn’t look that big in this photo because I’ve split the quilt into 9 pieces and each panel is being quilted separately with 4 different designs.  It’s been a fun challenge to stitch on a very large scale, and each panel has finished quite nicely.

As of today I’m down to just 2.5 panels, so if I can just get some time at the sewing machine to finish these up this project will be ready to put together and then finally get on the bed.  It’ll be really nice to have it finished because NC is getting hot already and this quilt has the thinnest Quilter’s Dream Poly batting (request thickness) so it will hopefully be a lot cooler than the comforter we’re using right now.

When I’m not buzzing through those KING sized panels, I plan to relax on the couch with hand work projects.  One massive project is this quilt of all 365 designs from the blog:

Where is the handwork exactly on this quilt?  If you remember back to Quilt Along #7, each piece is connected with strips, but the back has a folded strip that can be hand or machine stitched down.  Being the insane perfection fanatic that I am, I’ve decided to hand stitch all those strips of binding.

The missing strip from the top of the quilt is already sitting on the couch upstairs halfway finished.  The nice part of this quilt is that each of the strips are quite portable, so I’ve taken them along with me around town.  The best way to look at a project like this is as a marathon – you don’t get it done by sprinting, but by plodding along at a steady pace.

No, this definitely won’t be done by the end of May, but it will make for a very nice handwork project to take along with me throughout the summer.

Of course, my goddess quilt series is never far from my mind, despite the fact that I’m so terribly behind on this year’s goal of 12 quilts.  I still need to baste and quilt Power of Now:

And I need to paint and hand embellish Power of Birth.  This will be another hand work project to sit on the couch with James and hopefully not lose beads and ribbons and decorative yarn all over the house.

I also have three new designs for quilts which are banging around so hard in my head, I seriously need to let them out on paper!

With so many projects in progress, it’s hard to pick just one to work on at a time.  I’ve decided to focus on the KING quilt because it needs to be done before summer.  Then all the other projects can be worked on all at the same time.  It might make me a bit crazy, but at least I will get a little further with each one this month.

Now instead of canceling Wednesday posts entirely for this month, let’s use that day to share whatever we’re working on during this vacation!  Be ready Wednesday to still link up with whatever you’re working on this week!

Let’s go quilt,

Leah Day