Friday, November 20, 2009

Quilt Therapy

Ahhh. A good Friday evening. I finished sewing the last 5 of the 20 blocks that I will use for my oversized couch quilt. I am considering having this particular quilt be my very first "named quilt." I am thinking of calling it Country Arrowheads, or Arrowheads, or something similar.

Anyway, after that little burst of sewing, the kids put in Star Trek, which was one of our Redbox treats for the weekend. So, I switched over to working on my hand quilting project, which is slowly coming along nicely.

I have truly enjoyed working on this piece of hand work. It is relaxing and gratifying to have a project sitting at the ready whenever I want to sit for awhile.

But, I am also very excited to start the Crazy Shortcut part of my couch quilt. I love the speed and precision of my machine quilting efforts. This is even shorter (and fancier) because it is quilted only in the seam lines with decorative stitching. I am using black thread and possibly an arrowhead stitch throughout (hence the names). Simple, graphic, appealing, quick: I am positively giddy thinking about it! I am almost seriously considering a bit of a pieced backing for interest, but I haven't decided about that yet. We will see.

I love when we are on break. My quilting helps me to feel productive in a tangible way that working as an educator seldom can. Not that teaching is not rewarding, but sometimes it's impossible to know how you may or may not have impacted those around you. At the end of the day, I can hold my accomplishments in my hands and admire that it all came together. It feels pretty darn good!

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