Charity Quilt Workday!
I decided to see how much I could get done on charity quilts and tops in an 8 hour workday today. Well, I almost made 8 hours.
I started about 9 am - got a late start this morning - and quit around 6 pm but my husband and I took off for about 2 hours between 12 and 2 and went to the church building to do a few things there, run to the store and then to McD’s. I’ll count 15 minutes of that time towards my workday as I was doing something with the charity quilts and tops in the room upstairs in the building. This means I only managed to get in 7 hours and 15 minutes, roughly, in my 8 hour workday. Sadly.
As a review - my overall goal for the year is 120 finished charity quilts and of those 120, 52 large ones.
So what did I do?
In the morning:
I started off by sewing borders on 4 BIG tops that Fran gave me but I wanted to make larger.
I do that by adding a 2.5” inner border and then a 6.5” outer border to make it a really nice 88”x102” top or thereabouts. I already had all these cut from when I did them before in a massive cutting spree. I am feeling the need to get these all caught up because Fran told me she has sent another box and I am doing my best not to get all behind again!
I also added a few other borders to some charity tops I had already prepared and were in my sewing room.
Then I brought in the two big bolts of batting I had left in the van and dumped them off in the living room so we could drive the van easily without those huge things blocking the view!
I did all that by noon. Then we headed out to the church building to take care of the things we needed to do and after dinner, we came back and I got busy again.
I’m down to 114 quilts in that room!
During lunch time:
We went to the church building and I picked out three charity quilts for a young lady and her mom and child. I also took more photos of the wardrobe that is holding tops.
I’ve been trying to keep track of how many quilts are in the room by writing it down in this notebook.
The bottom shows the large ones I want to have finished by the end of 2021!
I did bring back a few quilt tops to work on that go with the backings I have.
These quilt tops are smaller and I thought they would coordinate well with the farming backing fabric I have. I brought them back from the upper part of that cabinet at the church building.
In the afternoon:
I pressed. I had done all that sewing of putting borders on, but truthfully, I just sewed, and didn’t take time to iron anything.
I pressed all the tops I had finished up in the morning and a backing that had needed it - it had just been sitting near the ironing board, patiently waiting for me.
Then I went down to the cutting area and cut up a few more borders for a couple of the tops I had started in the morning but didn’t have everything cut. I then went back to the sewing room and sewed them and then pressed those tops.
Then at about 4:30, I came downstairs. I had hopes to sandwich 2 big quilts and 2 small ones. I had even brought home 3 children’s quilt tops that I thought would look great with the farm backing I had bought (I’m storing these at the church in my storage room where I keep the finished quilts).
So, I worked on sandwiching the 2 big ones. These take me about 30 minutes each these days. Probably longer also than it would take first thing in the morning when I’m fresh and not at all tired.
I went to sandwich two of the small ones. I got the farm fabric, and laid it out on the table and then started really looking at it… LOOK!
“Uh oh!” I told myself. “I will have to piece this backing as the print is not the direction that makes it easiest for me. However, the farm print is so cute, I’m still glad I got it.
So, what I did was cut off a 66” piece - actually 4 of them and will piece them together tomorrow and then I can sandwich a couple of the smaller quilts using the farm backing.
Once I piece two together I’ll have a piece that is about 66”x125”. I’ll then just cut it off after I sandwich the quilt and use that cut off on the next one, etc.
So I opted instead of doing two small ones was to sandwich one more large quilt. This puts me at 10 big sandwiched ones and 1 small one waiting to be finished. I am going to try to make up my 1 per week - as I’m behind, so I want to sandwich 3 or 4 more and then I’ll get busy quilting and finishing these 13 by the end of March, I hope.
My goal on these big ones was to finish one of these large quilt tops a week for a minimum of 52 this year. I have over 52 tops already - these are all from Fran and it’s time for me to get caught up! I’ve been behind for years! Last year I did a lot on the small ones I had…but left the big ones to tackle in 2021!
These are two more tops I have ready to add borders to tomorrow.
I also need to get some of the smaller little ones done. They seem so much faster by comparison…not sure why.
I just think the bigger size compounds the difficulties in working with them. Because seriously, a 60”x80” quilt and a 90”x100” quilt feel quite different from each other when it comes to sandwiching and quilting. It almost seems like twice as much work, but it must be in my head as it isn’t 2x as much coverage.
I didn’t quite get my 8 hours but I wanted to spend some time working on another project before calling it quits for the day.
I don’t know where the time went today. It seemed to just fly and I didn’t really waste time nor did I take a lot of breaks. I guess that’s just how much time things take!
All in all, I’m pretty pleased. I was able to get a reasonable amount done and the best part is, I’ve got several of these big tops sandwiched! They are the ones I dread doing. But they are so nice once I finish them and people are so happy to get them! It does make it worth it!
And now you know how I spent my day! Kind of boring, I suppose - but necessary!
I tried to take pictures along the way so I could share it with you!
Thanks for coming along on this journey with me!
Have a great day wherever you are reading this!
Stay safe!
Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store here!
Here’s one of the beauties we have!
