Friday, April 1, 2016

Get It Done! March Recap, April Goals

Posting this a little late today --- our community garden opened for the first day of the season and I wanted to get in early and turn over the soil in our bed in prep for planting!  As for the quilting report:  to sum it up, March was weird!  After the high of hand quilting and finishing the "High Strung + 2" quilt, I had hoped to quickly get it labeled and move on to other things.  Strangely enough though, right after I just wasn't motivated to sew.  For about a week, I did not approach my machine.   On top of that, one of my husband's aunts (my MIL's sister) was admitted to the ICU and the whole family gathered to go see her.  That meant we had to host my MIL and her husband on short notice when they came up from North Carolina.  His aunt seems to be rallying for the time being, but it was unsettling while we waited to find out about diagnoses and treatment options.  Then there was the purchase of a long desired new tool in the Gadget Fanatic arsenal (detailed here) that kept me busy Internet shopping from the end of February and throughout March. 

As a result, I pretty much worked off and on (and more off than on) on just one project the whole month.  Worse, it wasn't even one on the list AND it STILL isn't finished!  It's the label for the High Strung quilt and this is what I've got so far:


Yeah, I know a pretty detailed label but there's a story (there always is) and if I can ever get it finished, you'll definitely hear it!  Oh wait!  I also made some strip sets and blocks for yet another holiday lap quilt.  This was a PIG* sitting on my cutting table and I figured I could "kill two birds with one stone" (pun intended) by using it as a leader/ender project while putting together the pieced units, rows and border on the label above.  The hope was to get it off the table and onto the back of the quilt.  Well, at least the first part happened anyway!

*PIG = Project In a Grocery sack

So regarding March's list:  I'm not going to list out everything from last month -- if you need to see what I had planned to work on, check out this post and know that the status for everything planned for March is NOT DONE

Moving right along to April: what's in the hopper?  I need to take a little detour this month.  Although I will bring forward two projects from the old list, I'm completely changing direction.  In honor of the need to spring clean and prepare for possible house guests in the coming months (in addition to the potential for my in-laws to return to see our my DH's aunt, my youngest son graduates from High School in June),  I want to focus on house related projects this month.  Well, technically this too is a carry forward from last month -- it just changes from a "choose one" option to having each project spelled out as individual items.  So the Goals for April look like this:

1.  March carry-over #1:  Prepare the wholecloth quilt for quilting. 

2. March carry-over #2: The secret project.  Well it sucks that it isn't already done for this month so now the hope is I can at least get it to the flimsie stage by the end of the month whether it's done in secret or not.

3.  T-shirt quilt for the couch.

4.  Wool wallhanging for the kitchen.

5.  Seminole kitchen curtains.

6.  Wool wall hanging for the entrance to the kitchen.

7.  Wool garden wall hanging for the living room.

8.  Chair pillow in Civil War fabrics.

9.  Side board table runner.

10.  Appliqued Spring table cloth.

11.  Quilted chair cushions for the terrace chairs.

12.  Not a quilt but quilt related:  terrace barn sign.

The bad news?  Last year when I made goal lists this long they remained largely undone!  I'm hoping that some fresh sewing coupled with extensive house cleaning will help move these projects along faster than normal.  I also have a few general home dec projects I need to work on like a pillow for our entry bench and new curtains for the dining room that I also want to squeeze in.  If I pull this off, my Bullet Journal will really be busy this month!

Looking forward to a spring filled with gardening, sewing and a refreshed home!  Wishing everyone a very Happy Spring season!

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