I’m loving that I’m finally spending consistent time at my machine. Definitely helping to soothe my nerves, even when I do stupid stuff.
I got my basting spray. A lot of it. It was on a very good sale so I took advantage. I’m definitely ready for some production over the next few months! Of course, once I received it and was putting it away, I found a quite large can that had gotten pushed behind a lot of other stuff on one of my shelves. So I’m set for awhile. A little bugged by the fact that a couple of the caps were broken in one of the shipments (the 5 cans came in two packages), but I don’t think it should be a problem.
Joann’s had Mary Ellen’s Best Press gallon jugs on a very good sale too, so I restocked on that. I am READY.
I also got more 1/4” elastic and some pipecleaners for my next stint of mask-making, but I had other things I wanted to take care of first today.
After all, I’d spent a significant amount of time cleaning this morning, so I decided to reward myself with fun sewing rather than obligatory sewing. Yes, I want to take care of my family but, admittedly, I really dislike making those masks.
Once I had all that put away and had cleaned off my cutting table so I had some space to work with, I figured out the backing and batting for the baby quilt, then basted everything (with, you guessed it, spray) on my design wall. I opened a window so I had plenty of air ventilation. In the future, I’ll also have plenty of masks to wear—right now I haven’t made any for myself yet!
Somehow I cut my batting a little on the short side so I had to piece some together to get it wide enough. Still not sure how I did that, but in the grand scheme of things not a big deal.
Then I practiced FMQ on a practice sandwich to get the feel for it again. I have several practice sandwiches pre-made from back when I was doing Craftsy classes, so it’s really easy for me to spend five minutes running through some drills. Since all I wanted to do on this is a meander, it didn’t take me long to get back into the swing of things.
While I was digging out the practice sandwiches I discovered a bunch of quilting stencils I’d forgotten that I took from my Mom’s sewing room when we were cleaning it out after she’d passed away. I’ve never tried to use them, but I may have some UFOs that would warrant doing some practice with some of them. It’s mostly just that I hate the pokiness of marking.
Really, I’m just a very lazy quilter.
Once I felt pretty confident that I remembered what I was doing, I set myself up with my queen-sized Supreme Slider, my free-motion foot, some light gray thread and…oh, right, I used to use quilting gloves, didn’t I…pulled them out, slid them on…put on an audiobook, and we’re off!
I got about a third of the quilt done when I decided I should stop while I was ahead. I did a good job at keeping my shoulders down and mostly staying relaxed, keeping my speed pretty even, and never crossing over any of my lines.
By the way, as sloths are the main motif in this quilt, I did play around a little bit with whether I could do an abstract sloth design in the FMQ, but it ended up just looking like a meander anyway and was taking me longer.
So much for being overtly creative.
I’m having fun, and I’m planning on spending a significant part of my Mother’s Day tomorrow at my machine.
And, oh my, does it feel good to be able to say that again.