Progress

I think I might be bored with HSTs now. I finished the top of the christmas quilt and pressed it all and thought, well, that was fun, time for something new.

Except, well, I can't really start anything new, since I have a whole lotta stuff still to be done in the next week. I did pretty good today though - after I finished the top I got it basted and quilted - now all it needs is trimming down and binding. I've already got the strips cut, and I've got the strips cut to bind that red and green one I made a few weeks ago to see how much I disliked wool batting, but I'm puting it off. I hate binding.

I got the other three christmas sacks finished today too. We always used pillow cases as a kid and then we would lug the pillow cases around to wherever christmas was that year, so this year I have made us some ones in pretty christmas fabric that are still the size of pillow cases, but have squared off bottoms and handles. Handles are handy, as the name suggests.

I made the lining for Casey's bag, and devoted some time to berating myself for deciding to make hers a fancy bag.  Bags without pockets and with handles that go from one end to the other instead of up the sides are much, much easier, but she wants a little bit of leather from the back of some jeans sewn to hers and for whatever reason, that makes me feel like the bag has to be as fancy as the pants it came off of.

And I made a stubby holder, just to see if I could remember how to do it. I can - yay me!

Unfortunately, at some point while I was doing all this my phone went flat, so I couldn't take any pictures. It's charging now though, so I'll take a heap in the morning.

Slow and steady

HSTs are sewn. 

Now to make the most of three days off - get the last couple of bits of christmas shopping (mainly nice foods for the grandparents) done, and sew sew sew. Finish this quilt, bind the other christmasssy quilt, and make 3 bags for the sisters.

Actual quilting!*

I'm a bit behind on my TV viewing. Now that my laptop is home downloading has resumed, but there's still 2 weeks of watching to do, and not much time between work and sleeping and going to the gym and doing stuff for christmas.

Tonight when I got home I decided I'd make a start on the christmas quilt. And I decided I'd watch some Castle while I did it. I must say, the episodes were both brilliant. Beckett working through her issues with the sniper in the first one, all deep and emotional, with crying and stuff, and then the odd comedy/thriller of the next episode, where they're trapped in a room and don't know how they got there, and then there's a tiger. And they're trapped in a room with a tiger. And it's oddly hilarious, while absolutely gripping. It held me up quite a bit. The morals of this story are a) don't quilt and watch new episodes of Castle at the same time, and b) a tiger can knock over an on-it's-end chest freezer, making it an unsafe place to stand atop of. If there's a tiger.

Still, although progress was slow, I did get all my triangles cut. 80 of them, though I only needed 72, but since I placed them randomly it was good to have some spares to get a good balance.

It's a shame I didn't have another darker red triangle. to put at the right hand end of the second row down, but all my leftover triangles were of the mid-shade.

I'll see how I'm feeling about it once my pairs have been sewn - I've got more than I need of the binding fabric to cut another one to put in, but I don't remember it looking that noticeable in the real world. Taking photos of quilts does funny things to them.

*That title's a lie since no actual quilting was done, but cutting up fabrics is what quilting's all about, even if my sewing machine didn't get plugged in.