Sewing with a Friend

I had the opportunity to spend the day sewing with a friend today. It was great! I went to her house around 9:40 and we sewed till 12:45. Went to grab a bite of lunch at a local restaurant (yummy burgers!) then returned to her home for more sewing. I got back home shortly after four pm in time for my husband to get home from work. It was a perfect way to spend my day off from work. Approximately 5 hours of sewing time with lots of chatting and catching up on stuff. It's a perfect way to pass the time. I recommend it heartily. Obviously I had a lot of fun.

I'm currently working on a scrap quilt. It's actually a quilt following an idea I found on-line called a "crumb" quilt. It's a means of using up scraps. I'm getting close to having all my blocks finished and ready to sew the blocks together.

From the number of blocks I've got started it looks like I might have enough to do two or three quilts. My whole reason for doing this type of quilt was to have something to put onto my Grand Quilter frame and do some experimenting with a scrap quilt before I put on a quilt I really care about. These quilts will be my first "practice" ones to get accustomed to my quilting machine.

I just counted how many blocks are in my stack. Wow! 54 blocks. They're going to be at least 12 inches across (if not a bit larger) so I really do have quite a few quilts on hand to practice techniques with! That will be more than four quilts if I use 12 blocks (plus border) for lap-sized quilts. This would make great gift projects for the boys and their girlfriends. Or it could be three quilts if I use 20 blocks for each quilt and add in a couple more to even the count for some larger quilts. Time will tell what I finally decide upon.

I can say they won't be particularly "pretty" quilts because no thought went into fabric selection or anything like that. They'll be strictly utilitarian type quilts, make-do type quilts, using scraps that were readily on hand. But now the "Make do, Re-Use, Recycle" attitude is so "in" so that'll probably be alright. It's actually getting back to the "roots" of original old fashioned quilt making it its infancy before the advent of modern day quilt making that has become so "matchy-matchy" professional and processed. So it's a mish-mash of fabrics with the "make-do", old fashioned prairie homesteader outlook of it all. And I wonder if the kids and their girl-friends will go for it. If not, they can hide these quilts under another coverlet and still keep extra warm and toasty this winter. If they don't like them (or don't want them) I'll keep them here at home for when the boys periodically come to visit. We can always use extra quilts in the car for winter survival gear or for watching TV in the winter. And if they're really too ugly, I can cut them up for dog blankets. I'm sure the dogs won't care. The dogs always seems to get excited when I change out their bedding and put fresh clean blankets in their kennels - like they're being pampered.

Regardless of the beauty of these quilts, the time spent with my friend has been great. Chatting and quilting - what a great way to spend the day! I am looking forward to more days like today. We've been getting together once a week for a few weeks now and I really look forward to our time together. It really makes for some great sewing therapy.