Field Trips in Fiber - Adventures in quilting, hand dyed fabric and fiber art.

One Hour

When I quit work I envisioned that I would quilt and create for hours every day. I dreamed of hours and hours of free time. It hasn't turned out that way and I think it's all my own fault.

Of course, I do work and I have to spend a lot of time on my fabric dyeing business but recently I realized that there are a lot of days that go by and I haven't sewn one stitch and I'm sure it's a discipline issue, not a time issue. I'm spending way too much time on the computer and I waste a lot of bits of time.

I have one priority and that is to exercise every day. I usually do it first thing in the morning. Then I do my daily computer work. Unfortunately, my day seems to often end there. I've gotten into some bad time-management habits and I need to change them. I'm not watching a lot of TV but I am spending a LOT of time on the computer.

I have found that when I need to change a habit that I have to schedule the activity. I did that with exercising until it became a natural part of my day. I learned that if I exercised as soon as I got up that I would be done with it before I woke up.  Of course that took about 6 months and I could get out of the exercise habit in 2 days.  

I want to spend more of my day sewing and quilting and I've decided to start by focusing on quilting on the longarm. I think if I can get away from teh computer for an hour to quilt that the rest of the day will naturally become more productive so I've set a goal to quilt on the longarm for 1 hour every day. 

That bright quilt has been on the longarm for a month! I let myself ignore it because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do for part of it. This week I decided to change that and, for the past few days I have spent 1 hour every day on the quilt. I finished all of the SID work, CC in all of the blocks and all of the quilting in the yellow. It's not as if this quilt is going to ever be on public display. What I quilted on it really didn't matter. What mattered is getting it done. Now I have everything done except the batik dot sections! 

I'm going to continue my one-hour-a-day commitment and will post my progress once a week with my Design Wall Monday post. Here's where I am this morning. I need to get this one done and move on. There's a large stack of quilts waiting to be quilted.

How do you manage your time? Do you have any great ideas for making sure you are working on the things that you really want to do?

Blogger's BOM

It's time for a new installment of the Blogger's BOM block. This month's block is designed by Amy Smart of Diary of a Quilter.

Here's my version. I love this block! It might be my favorite so far and it was easy to construct.

Here are all of my blocks together. You might notice that I fixed my hideous block from last month by replacing the green with white. It's much better now!

If you are participating be sure to upload photos of your block to the Flickr Group.

Here's a list of all of the participating designers.  You can join in at any time!

Here are the other designers and their corresponding months: 

September - Sherri McConnell - A Quilting Life

October - Vicki Welsh - Field Trips in Fiber

November - Stephanie Dunphy - Loft Creations

December - Pat Sloan - The Voice Of Quilting

January - John Adams - Quilt Dad

February - Amy Smart - Diary of a Quilter

March - Allison Harris - Cluck, Cluck, Sew

April - Amy Lobsiger - Mrs. Schmenkmen Quilts

May - Cathy Underhill - Cabbage Quilts

June - Pam Vieira-McGinnis - Pam Kitty Morning

July - Victoria Findlay Wolfe - Bumble Beans Inc.

August - Amy Ellis - Amy's Creative Side

September - Sarah Fielke - The Last Piece

October - Jackie Kunkel - Canton Village Quilt Works 

Design Wall Monday

It was the best of quilty weekends around here this weekend. Mom came to visit Thursday night and we headed out to the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival Friday with Estelle. We think this is one of the best quilt exhibits that they have had at Mid-Atlantic. I took loads of photos that I will share over the next few weeks. It was also exciting to see my own quilts hanging in the show. That was very cool and it's very funny to hear people comment about your quilt when they don't know you are standing near by.

On Saturday I did some quilting on the longarm while Mom worked on a new Stack N Whack quilt. Although I think I spent most of Saturday recovering from waling all day Friday!

Yesterday I did a little piecing, a little applique, quilted more on the longarm and did some DSM quilting on my Snow Moon wall hanging. This one is close to being done!

There's lots going on this week so I'd better get to it. Meanwhile, check out what everyone else is doing over at Judy's blog.

 

Pat Sloan's Radio Show

Tomorrow at 4pm Eastern I will be a guest on Pat Sloan's radio show at American Patchwork and Quilting. I will be on the last segment around 4:45. You can listen live or listen later. If you've never listened to Pat's show, give it a try. She has lots of past episodes and she has a great variety of guests.  I am looking forward to talking with her about my hand dyed fabrics.

Check it out tomorrow afternoon!

Nelly Moser Fabric Palette Projects

 

This week I played with the Stars and Chains block. It's another one that isn't so easy to construct. I will try to come up with something simpler the next time.

If you like these designs and are inspired to make one (or any other design) with the Nelly Moser Fabric Palette you can find all of the ordering information here.

With this first design I added a pink dot on white commercial print to the mix. I think this palette would work beautifully blended with white fabric.

This is the same quilt but using only the palette fabrics.

Again, the same pattern with a different colorway. This one has a very Sprint look to it to me.

In this version I alternated the Stars and Chains block with a simplified version and set it on point. I then used the gradient in the border.

Same one, a different colorway.