My Quilting Date: Rescheduled!

If you’ve been reading my posts the from early October, you know that I was planning to use one of the days from the four-day weekend that just went by for starting on my new quilting project (pictured on the left). I was going to cut fabric and maybe start piecing a couple of blocks together. I knew I had a an editing project to do on Thursday, so Friday was going to be the quilting day. Then I could get back to other work projects on Saturday

As the weekend approached, I got a little nervous because I didn’t seem to be as excited as I thought I should be about the project. In addition, the list of work-related things that were scheduled for the weekend seemed like they might push the quilting time away from me again. However, I was determined that I wasn’t going to let that happen. I’m focused on my intention of making.taking time for me. I am not going to let quilting go by the wayside again.

But last Friday came and went with no cutting of fabric, no sewing of seams, no piecing of blocks In fact, the whole four-day weekend went by without any quilting activity. In the past, it would have been tempting to pack all the quilting stuff back up again, but  something really different went on this time. Even though I didn’t quilt on any of those four days, I did take some time on Wednesday evening to do a little prep work for Friday (because at that time, I was still going to at least cut some fabric on that day, even if I didn’t start sewing.

About a week ago, I had done the simple figuring involved with how to strip cut and piece the checkerboard type blocks. So on that Wednesday evening, I wanted to figure out how to cut the pieces for the coffee mug block, even if it was just the two sets of triangles. I used my Quilt Pro program so I could figure out the layout and measurements to get ready to piece this cup. But I discovered that for a variety of reasons, things were not working as I expected. I solved some of the problems, but there were others, like getting the actual measurements for the layouts, instead of just the layouts. I had A4 paper in my printer, and the 8 1/2 x 11 default would not adjust, and the edges got cut off, so I couldn’t get accurate measurements. Yes, I have the other size paper, but it wasn’t handy. And it was getting late.

Interestingly, how the few minutes of preparation taken on Wednesday night didn’t yield the results I expected, but they certainly kept everything from going south if I had just started cutting the easy pieces on Friday and then ran into the snag. The path was clear. I needed to reschedule the actual quilting day, and set up a separate time to figure out these technical issues. I know I’ve said it before, but thinking about thinks differently affects everything.

So, it will be a yet to be determined day during the week of November 4 when I have my quilting day. In the meantime, I will figure out the layout issues with my block (or see if I can figure out how to make Quilt Pro do it for me). And now I have a game-like goal: to get things set up well enough that maybe I can have two days of quilting in that lovely week in November. One is my intention, but a second would be a gift. I’m going to go for it.