One Hour of Needle & Thread: Week 1!

Lessons in life:

Sometimes you gotta take out what you put in!

And that was the discouraging part. I noticed as I was doing my One Hour of Needle & Thread at Sally’s the other night that the tension seemed funny on the binding…..sure enough…when I tugged on the binding I got loose stitches – they looked like railroad tracks or eyelashes on the front of the quilt where the binding was flipped and turned to the back to hand stitch down.

SO last night’s activity of UNSEWING one full side of the Nearly Completely Insane quilt undid the hour and a half of putting the stitches in the night before. Well Drat. Bummer.

But still – I did make great progress last week even with a busy week and dealing with body clock adjustments.

My total for the week of totally un-plugged, non machine oriented, hand stitching with my feet up in the recliner time was 10.5 hours! If I had told myself at the beginning of the week that I was going to do 10.5 hours of hand quilting or hand binding that week….I would have laughed my head off!

One hour a day. It adds up. The only day I missed was Friday because that is the day that I arrived in Aiken.

Don’t have an hour to spare? Shoot for 30 minutes. Shoot for 15 minutes.

Just be sure that the binding you are hand-sewing down has been stitched with the right machine tension first so you don’t have to UNDO the last hour that you put into it!

This is a picture of where I am now on the quilt. I have finished one row of fans on one side and turned the corner and am part way up the next side. It’s hard to get a detail shot on this quilt that shows you the fans…but this is where I’m at! Yes, Fans work from the outside edge of the quilt in toward the center, around and around and around ---so at least each round that I finish takes me closer to the center, and each consecutive round is SMALLER!

I’m inviting those who started with me last week and shared their STARTING pics HERE ---((If you haven’t checked since last week, go back and check! There are 40 who are charting their progress on their blogs with us!)) to share their progress with us in the linky below! If you are just starting and want to link up too, go for it! Remember to include a link back to THIS POST somewhere in your post (Not my whole blog or people will get lost trying to find this entry.) Show your progress. Link your post also back to last week’s post of where you started so that others can follow your progress.

Remember, we need the address of the specific POST when you link up. The address should end in .html NOT .com For instance, my blog address is quiltville.blogspot.com and that simply isn’t enough. To get the address of your specific POST, click on the title of the post and the address should appear at the top of your browser in the address bar.

The address for THIS post is http://quiltville.blogspot.com/2012/09/one-hour-of-needle-thread-week-1.html see the difference?

When in doubt, ask me. If you link it to your whole blog I’ll have to delete your entry and have you try again because I can’t fix it for you.

I’ve heard from so many that they just needed a gentle nudge, or a push, or a shove to get that goal on paper and get started.

It’s a great way to celebrate September as National Sewing Month!

I’m hoping that I’ll get oodles done today and there will be time for QuiltCam tonight! Not exactly sure what time – but I can usually squeeze it in around 8pm Eastern time…..so be looking! Yes, there are more bowtie blocks to be sewn, but I also want to get caught up on my Barrister’s Block Sow-Along blocks!