Progress and Courage

This week wasn't bad.  Actually it wasn't bad at all. I was able to keep my hours at work down a bit. Of course it helped it that I had two 3 day weekends in a row.  But I am still working on leaving at 3:00 to 3:30.  

Then even though the grand-kids were over several days, I was able to get the studio cleaned up a bit.  I have gone through several piles and sorted out paperwork and put a lot of things away.  I really need to spend a few hours a week on paper work.  I probably should plan on organizing the shelves in the studio a few hours each week as well. I did manage to find the binding I made for the Christmas Lemonade quilt. 

Progress - I finally got all the half square triangle blocks for the first Ribbon Dance quilt squared up. At least as square as I can make them. I did learn a little more about using pre-cuts. One, when they are different sizes center the smaller square on the larger square and cut by the smaller square. Two, pre-cuts by the same company are more likely to be the same size. In other words, two Moda charm packs are more likely to match up than a Moda and a Benartex. Third if the charm pack isn't square don't plan on using it for 5 inch squares.

That being said I am looking forward to actually sewing the squares into blocks.  I hope to start that this week. A little each evening would be good.

Courage - Well I did it, I started manually quilting on Millie. At first it didn't go very well.  I had left the Hartley Fence on and that was giving me problems. I took it off and still it seem that I was having to fight the machine. I was ready to give up. The stars looked so bad. I was feeling pretty discouraged

Then last night I realized why it was so hard. I had not dis-engaged the clamps on the drive belts. Today, I tried again and it went so much better. I am feeling much more confident about using Millie without the computer. 

Oh don't get me wrong, I am far from good yet. But I am pleased.  It is a learning process and I feel like I am learning.  I will get better the more I do it. Like all things that are worth doing, it is going to take some practice. 

This will be a quilt that we have out at Christmas time, the grand kids can snuggle under it for Christmas stories. Since it is for our own use, I am not ripping out the mistakes.  They will be there to remind me of where I started. IN the mean time I am about half way done with the borders. I will be finishing up this quilt quite soon.

So I got brave and tackled something new and I pushed forward on the current project.  It feels like a pretty good week to me. How did yours go?