I’m so glad I’m able to sew regularly again.  My sanity suffers if I don’t!

My winter term at college was a heavy one, teaching wise, and by the end of April, it seemed that marking and lectures and exam prep were a 24/7 job.  I was lucky if I got to lather, rinse and repeat; sewing was a distant dream.  But the summer term is here and it’s been so enjoyable to get back to my machine and my handwork.

One of those sewing projects is the new Carrie Nelson quilt I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Raising the Roof. Yes, I’ve been working on ‘pretties’ too but I am liking how quilting requires different sewing skills, keeping both garment and quilting sewing feeling fresh.

Carrie’s directions have been fantastic.  Really, top notch step-by-steps.  I especially like her technique for 4 flying geese at a time.  I’d also forgotten how quick a simple pieced quilt can go together.  I was still on applique time 🙂

I’ve been working at it diligently over the past three weeks, between other tasks and it’s amazing how far I’ve gotten, just using the carrot approach, as Mary Corbet calls it, of 15 minutes here, 20 minutes there.

Believe it or not, I’ve finished all 64 of the main 8 1/2″ x 8 1/2″ blocks (32 stars, 32 log cabins) and I’ve  begun sewing the rows together.  They’re all packaged up in ziplocs, the top corners marked, and when I get a moment, I sew a row together and it’s one step closer to done.

In fact, the only reason the main body of the quilt isn’t together yet is I ran out of brown thread and needed to get more before I could continue putting them together.

I still have the outer border to finish strip piecing.  I’ve done two of them.  They’re a bit much as a solid block but cut up, they’ll be a nice finish to this scrappy quilt.

I’ve also decided against the cream inner sashing in favour of a red and maroon stripe, I’ll need to head back to the store to pick up more of that fabric, so that I have enough for the binding and the inner sashing.  But still, I’m guessing that by the end of May, I should have the entire quilt ready to go to Allison’s for quilting.

That said, my summer to-sew list is still shamefully long. 🙁  I do have another quilt in the works (it too is an easy pieced quilt like this) but we can’t do it all.  We can just do our best!