A 10 hour Charity Quilt Workday - Here's what was Accomplished
Monday of last week was a holiday - Easter Monday is what they call it.
Everything is closed. Shut.
That includes the gym, sports facilities, etc.
Add pandemic to that and it is Q-U-I-E-T outside.
I decided to try to get in 10 hours of charity quilting and see how much I could get done!
I also thought I’d make records and take at least one picture each hour and then report on how it went.
(I have a whole pile of charity quilts already sandwiched and am ready to quilt quite a few of them.)
My machine has decided to give me some fits about free motion quilting (FMQ), so I think it will be a day of straight line quilting. I’ll need to listen to something while doing this, because it is very, very boring!!! But I can handle boring as long as I can get this quilting done! It always looks nice in the end, and people like it fine, so I’m okay doing it all day long. I will try to take a 5 - 8 minute break every hour to move a bit, run get more to drink etc. I’ll have to keep on top of that however, or I can easily stretch a 5 minute break to 15 or 20!
I’m also hoping if I do all this straight line quilting that maybe the machine will have gotten over it’s temperamental ways and decide to cooperate again and let me finish the charity quilt I was free motion quilting but stopped due to constant issues (thread suddenly breaking every few inches of sewing).
Now that it’s been a week, I’ve been able to solve my issues with my Janome 8900 with the purchase of a couple of new bobbin holders. It FMQ-ed just fine yesterday.
We took off an hour for lunch/dinner at about 1 pm and went to McD’s and ate in the truck. (We don’t have inside dining yet.) We wanted to support them for being open on a holiday. We needn’t have worried - they were plenty busy!
I’ll show pictures of what I worked on each hour. I took notes - and obviously I didn’t start and stop on the hour exactly.
What you will see is a variety of the charity quilts I have to finish - from the Big Fabric Haul brown ones to some children’s tops from Fran - a lady in AZ who makes tops for me that I added borders to, to a Scrapbook style and then a few that my “elves” (Ewa and her mom) made from big squares - specifically the soccer ones you see later in the day and the purple butterflies one.
So here goes. I got started at 7:39 am.
Hour 1 - I worked on quilting a Big Fabric Haul quilt with wavy lines
Hour 2 - I finished the Big Fabric Haul with wavy lines and started on a second one with only straight lines - completely different design.
Hour 3 - I finished the straight line second Big Fabric Haul and worked on a children’s one from Fran that I had added borders to.
Hour 4 - I finished the children’s one I added borders to and started the Scrapbook one.
Hour 5 - I finished the scrapbook one and started another Big Fabric Haul with the leopard sashing and borders.
After 5 hours and 15 minutes, we took off and went to McDonalds!
Hour 6 - I finished the leopard sashing one with big squares and worked on a purple butterflies one with simply big squares. I used wavy lines for it.
Hour 7 - Wavy lines both directions is slower, but does look nice!
Hour 8 - I started and finished a soccer one with white stars on red - straight line quilting. I started a second soccer one with straight line quilting.
Hour 9 - I finished the second soccer one with straight line quilting and began another children’s one with bugs and big white polka dots on the outer border.
Hour 10 I quilted another one from Fran with gnome fabric on one of the borders.
I stopped!
DONE!
In the end, I was able to get 10 quilts quilted for charity.
I did not finish trimming them - but I did sew around the edge - a stay-stitching which I normally do before trimming. The ones that are the Around the World design I can straight line quilt in a little less than an hour, but the ones that I use the wavy line take more.
However, they are all still piled up waiting to be bound. But I figure that can be done later. For me, psychologically, the quilting is the hard part.
And I’m glad to be done! This was too much! Too intense. Five hours are okay but 10 hours of this type of quilting is a lot of pressure! I don’t think I’ll do it again. As I do get some piled up, however, I could quilt for 5 hours and bind for 5. :) Just not this week! I’m probably more likely to make myself do a couple at a time than trying this again soon!
I was kicking myself that I didn’t have enough bobbins already wound and I had to stop and wind some. I’ll try to be more efficient about this in the future and wind bobbins when I’m tired of doing other things but still want to feel productive!
I can’t say I was overly “tired” when I finished the day - just “tired of doing this type of quilting”!
And that’s all for that day! I’ve put off posting this long enough. A week later…
Have a great day wherever you are reading this! Stay safe!
Update on mom: As I wrote this post, I had no real idea how mom was doing - we are still praying! (We know she is on oxygen and being treated for pneumonia and is eating.)
Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store here!
Here’s one of the beauties we have!
