I had a goal last week of seeing how much I could get done if I put 40 hours into my project.

First of all, it was hard. Things were pulling at my time, trying to get me distracted, but I kept trying to get going. I worked long days - at least til 5 or 6 pm every day. I tried to get started working at 7 am.

When they say in your 60s you can’t get done what you get done in your 50s..believe them. :)

I will admit right off, that eating in the middle of the day is very detrimental to getting in 40 hours since I have to take time off smack dab in the middle of working hard time to fix dinner and then clean it up. It is psycholoigcally harder to go back to working hard after eating your big meal and cleaning it up. Years of growing up eating a big meal in the evening says the day is winding down after the big meal.

However…

I had made a huge pan of lasagna at the beginning of August and we did pull from that several days. I tried to be fast.

Anyway, I don’t need to tell you about that - instead of telling you the issues, let me say I was able to get more done if I started early in the day.

It felt if I started even one or two hours later, then I couldn’t get much done.

So there’s that.

A couple of things - when you quilt this much this fast, you go through a lot of batting.

:)

I’m glad I have a place close by that has batting. I was able to go get another roll a couple of times without it being a big deal. For those of you who don’t know, our wholesale findings place is very close - about 1/2 mile from our house. Actually according to Google maps it is 550 meters (1/3 mile) from our house and takes 2 min by car.

They sell poly batting in 50 meter (about 50 yards) which fits in the back of my van. This is a 100 gram batting or about 3 oz. Not high loft. Not extremely low loft either.

Also…while trying to work fast, it pays to pay attention every single second you are handling the machine. The haste makes waste saying is true. You can’t afford to get careless. It is better to be slower and careful than quicker and careless. I had a couple of “almosts” with my hands that reminded me of that.

About 10 quilts here - the cat lying on the pile made it harder to count but it is either 11 or 12 total.

I didn’t take a whole lot of pictures of the quilts on the long arm simply because I was pretty focused on getting my next top done and didn’t think about it. I did stop and get a few pictures, however.

So, actually this report is my “since August 1” update - and not just week 1. It’s more than a single week. I had promised myself I would start on August 1 and while I got slow start that day, it was at least a start.

I now have over 60 quilts quilted - I think it is either 61 or 62. These are 60”x80” approximately and are what we call European singles since they fit on a single bed.

I had four quilted here and waiting to be taken upstairs. I put them on top of the chest freezer to keep them off the floor and in a convenient and obvious place so I remember to take them upstairs when I need to go on up and get something/do something.

I know many in the states call this a lap - but a big single as is typical in the USA is just too big for the singles here. People don’t know what to do with so much quilt hanging over the edges.

I currently have only about 12 of them trimmed so far and 0 of them bound, labled or washed. I tend to work in batches and my first push is to get them all quilted. Then I will proceed to binding. Once I start binding, I will start washing, letting dry and photographing at the same time. I photograph in groups of 10.

To me, the quilting part is the huge part, even though it may only be about half of the work of finishing these up. It’s psychological with me. I know that. But all the rest of the steps seem easier.

I’m glad I do have enough ready to go tops. However, I am seeing that my next project for the rest of the year 2025 with regards to charity quilting is to measure and prepare another 120 tops for 2026. It’s not as if I don’t have tops - I do.

Tops and their backings are matched up and in pile of four here - wating to be quilted

I have been given tops by both Ewa and her mom and Fran and people back in the states.

In fact, I have many bags of them, but I do need to go through them. I need to make sure they are the size I need and get them ready to go if they are not. Most of them are not the actual size I need. When I bring them from the states, if they are the actual 60”x80” or 55-60”x80+” I will be able to use them without any changes. It makes it so much quicker for me when it is time to quilt them if they are the 60”x80” (approx) I am looking for because of the size of the fabric I’m using for the backing I have.

I do have some amazing tops that have been donated that are about 63”x81”, for example, and I want to prepare the special backings for those as my standard Polish backing fabric is too narrow for the 63” width top. However, the tops are wonderful, so I will just prepare some wider backings so I can go ahead and quilt those beauties.

I’ve been making sure that I have backings matched up to the tops in at least groups of 10.

If I have a bunch of tops and backings matched up, I will put some of them in this shelf to get them out of the way til I am ready to pull them.

It looks kind of like this when I do that. This picture shows only two, but inside the top is the backing - paired up and the right size.

Then when it is time to quilt the next one, when I’m having a marathon day, I can just pull the top and matching backing out and they are ready to go. Sometimes with things like this, the decisions are time consuming. In this case I’ve already made the decisions and am ready to move on.

So, end of Day 10 and I’m grateful to have made good progress on this project.

It has been eye opening to see what all I still need to do, however. It’s fine. It is always helpful to understand exactly what needs to be done. Like most things having an unclear direction leads to indecision and time consuming worry or mental busy-ness. Now I have direction.

Once I get the 120 quilted for this year, I will go back to the church building and make it much neater there in my storage room with regards to the tops that are all stacked around in bags. It’s kind of a mess.

I also have a goal for 2026 and that is to start quilting 1x a week for charity that is larger. I have some (not a huge number, but close to 100, I believe. :)) of double sized tops that I need to make progress on. These will be more like an American full - not usually as large as a queen. On the other hand, maybe I’ve added enough to them to make them a queen size. We’ll see. When I do make them the bigger queen size, people do seem to like them - so there’s that. Anyway - no matter what, I want to do one a week, average, of the larger ones - average for 2026. We’ll see if I can keep that up. It’s only about 4 a month, which sounds completely do-able, while sitting in my chair in front of my computer. :)

Thanks so much for coming along with me on this journey!

Have a great day wherever you are reading this.

Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store here!

Feel free to browse the site.

Week 1+ of Charity Quilting Update