Plans for May

May is a very exciting month around here. I have a big event in the works that we've been working on for a long time. Fingers crossed that everything goes according to plan. I'm anticipating it so naturally the month will just drag by.

I was hoping that the UFO number drawn would be 1, which is my biggest UFO to complete (seriously, I'll have to get my project manager hat out and outline tasks for each day in order to get it done) so that I would be busy and have something to focus on other than that big event. But they drew #10 this morning which is my Halloween Quick Quilt. Not super exciting but I need to finish it.

This is not bad though because of a recent find. In April I took a long arm quilting class at a local shop and can now rent time there on their machines for long arm quilting. YEA! My plan is to plow through my panel stash (I loved panels - the past tense of that word to be explained very shortly) as practice pieces before I put a large and time-intense quilt on the machine. I finished my first panel in about 2 hours at my first session - picture to come when I get the binding on. My second panel is taking longer because there is more detail that I am quilting. But it's going to be awesome. I next will focus on the Halloween Quick Quilt and get that completed for May.

Why have I fallen out of love with panels? My head wants me to follow the lines (can you say Type A??) but the machine is not precise enough for that. Luckily for me, I anticipated this and my first panel was quite abstract, so imperfect quilting worked ok on it. My second panel is not as abstract, but I am still able to do some "interpretive quilting" and it's going to come out quite nicely. I probably won't be buying many panels in the future.

This Sunday is also the last hand-piecing class in our series. I am both sad and happy. I really do love hand-piecing, but I'm slow at it. I have less than half of the blocks done but the instructor doesn't care. I think my quilt will look great once I'm done with it, whenever that happens to happen.

The other thing I'm doing is working on the quilts for hire that I'm doing for a friend's pastor's wife (figure that one out!). She saw a baby quilt that I made for my friend at her shower and asked me to make some baby quilts for her to have for when she starts to get grandchildren. Good thing there's no deadline or else I would be in trouble.

Here is the original design I started with - sort of a nine patch inside a distorted nine patch:

I've made the nine patches for two quilts and then assessed my fabric situation. Important note: The fabric used in the quilts is leftover from when she made her daughter's clothes. I think that's cool! Back on track: I didn't have enough of the white for the distorted nine patch. So I came back to EQ tonight and played with design. I have lots of this blue and yellow stripe and tried some on-point designs as you can see below.

I really love the on-point layout. The visual design is more pleasing to me and you see the colors more than the white space. So I think I'll be moving forward with this design instead. The blankets will be smaller than I anticipated, but I can always add borders.

Does May sound busy enough? I also have a sewing day planned with Jodie, Tina and Aimee, a Sunday afternoon at a dog agility trial and Bark at the Park, where you can take your dog to a major league baseball game.