Yay for Past Catherine

Well, it's been 8 days since my last post, in which I said that I needed to complete 1 flower each 6 days to stay on track. Unfortunately, I have not completed a single whole flower. However, I have started each of the 5 flowers I need to get me to halfway - see below (the 5th flower has less than a full seam done, but it's started!!). The top image was a fun surprise - apparently Past Catherine started working on this flower and then tucked it away again in the envelope, so when I pulled out what I was expecting to be single hexagons, the inner circle was already done! I can tell it must have been VERY EARLY in the process, because I stopped sewing them from the middle out like that after about the third flower...

In good and bad news, I don't have a lot of required sitting around to do between now and August 2, so I'll have to make my own opportunities to move things along. I am also starting to get REALLY BORED of hexagons. Maybe my incentive will be that I'll take a break at the halfway point and do something else crafty for a bit? Time will tell!

Full flowers: 27/64 (5 started)

- Catherine

Stay on target...

Thanks to planes, buses, porch chats, mom time, and catching up on work recordings in the last week, I am pleased to share my latest progress of *6* more completed flowers! See? [The red one is not a glitch in the matrix from last week's post - I have two redundant red flowers.]

This puts me only 5 flowers away from my goal of getting halfway done by August 9! As long as I can complete one every 6 days, I'll stay on track. In bad news (for the quilt, at least), I am done with flights until August, so I will have to be more proactive about carving out quilting time. In other bad news, I've completed all the partially-done flowers from previous posts - just 2.5 seams done on the newest flower (at the bottom of the photo) - so no easy wins in the near future.

It's tempting to start thinking about next steps - do I have all of the other fabric I need to complete the quilt? Do I start working on those hexagons and sewing them into small strips? Do I start imagining the overall flower layout? What will the actual quilting look like? But I will try to stay focused on just grinding out the flowers for now - still a long long way to go! 

Full flowers: 27/64 (1 started)

- Catherine

Un deux trois quilt

I made a concerted effort this last week to work on the partially-done quilt flowers whenever I could, with the result that I finished 5 more! The complete ones shown here were all the ones in the top photo from my last post, and the green strips occupied the rest of my time sewing with Mom yesterday (after finishing the yellow flower in the first ~30 minutes). With the greens and the five sets of strips from the lower photo in my last post, I'm poised to knock out a few more quickly. I also have yet more flights this coming week/weekend, and still more recordings to watch for work and some of our favorite sports on for the next month... hopefully lots of quilting!

In other motivational news, this batch of 5 puts me at ~1/3 done with all of the full flowers, an excellent step forward given that I was 1/4 done in just my last post. I will challenge myself to make it to halfway (32) by Aug 9. That might seem like a random choice but I will be flying home from an international destination that day; a good time to catch up if I'm behind. 

One additional reason I'm pleased I tried the "jump-starting" technique (see last post) which requires many needles is that it prompted me to find more needles; I found a packet of actual embroidery needles and WOW they are so much better to work with than the two I had been using, which makes the whole experience more enjoyable. I'm going to retire those original ones for other purposes.

Full flowers: 21/64 (6 started)

- Catherine

One quarter quilted

I have made the most of my last vacation in June! I had time on planes, in a cabin (with a well-placed skylight right over the comfy couch to light my stitches) and a surprising amount of success sewing in the car, despite the bumps in the road (and without getting carsick, yay)!

I finished 4 flowers completely (the blue one in the top left that looks a little wonky had three short seams left, which I finished during a webinar this morning), have four more that only need the final two seams, and 6 that are in strips (needing the final four seams). Woot!

I experimented with a new strategy while I was in the car, which was just to sew the first seam to connect two strips (which you can see in the top photo, i.e. the fabric at funny angles) as a way to make it mentally easier to come back later and sew the rest of the seam, since it was already started. I like it! But it takes up a lot of space trying to keep everything organized; definitely a tradeoff. And it requires a lot of needles, which can be pesky. 

I also tried out sewing the 4- and 5-block strips together and then the 3-block strip onto that rather than sewing both 4- & 3-block strips together and leaving the pesky middle seams for last (like I've done in all the incomplete flowers in the top image). I will definitely do that again - having the shorter seam for the larger chunk of fabric was helpful. 

Based on my quilt math of June 1, I need to finish 3 more flowers before the end of the month to stay ~on track for finishing by the end of the year. But it's very exciting to be 1/4 of the way done with the full flowers! And it's fun to bring smiles to a lot of people who sit next to me on planes. :)

Full flowers: 16/64 (10 started)

- Catherine

Quilting: the new fidget spinner

I have discovered a fun thing, which is that sewing during scientific talks helps me pay attention for much longer than normal. I learned so much cool science the last two days, and sewed a bunch! I sewed a little on the plane too, but not much. Look at my progress!
 

More talks for the next 1.5 days and then some vacation time coming up that I suspect will enable more sewing. Fingers crossed!

Full flowers: 12/64 (12 started)
- Catherine 

Quilting while wandern

Well, I had very good intentions, but I was clearly overly optimistic about how much sewing I would get done on the trip - most nights, rather than sewing, we were thinking about logistics for the next day, or getting in a few puzzles before collapsing. Most mornings, we were just trying to get out of bed, given the 8 hour time difference. However, I did do some sewing on the way over and A LOT OF SEWING on the flight home, so I am pleased to report some progress!

The most entertaining thing to report is that I tried to time myself sewing one flower from start to finish (to assist with my quilt math of last week). The purple one in the bottom corner is the result. I didn't time it perfectly (there were times that I got distracted and didn't stop the timer, and other times when I had stopped the timer and started sewing again without restarting it; hopefully those come out in the wash). I was also not 100% focused on sewing all the time, as I was watching movies too, but I don't think I frequently sit down to sew with a single-minded focus on hexagons, so that's probably realistic. All told, it came out to just over 4 hours. I may try that again just for a second data point, but it's useful to know I have somewhere on the order of 200 hours of sewing left to finish the flowers. Oof/yay?

6 more flights coming in the next 3.5 weeks! Watch out, flowers.

Full flowers: 12/64 (8 started)

-Catherine

Quilt math

I have been thinking more about my question from last week, whether I can even get through all of the flowers for this quilt this year (I dare not aspire to finishing the quilt top, since I don't even know what fabric I'm using for the white hexagons in between, and they will be so much work...). I've got 30.5 weeks left this year, and 53 flowers still to finish, so I should aim to finish at least 2 per week whenever possible (understanding that there will be at least 4 weeks when I don't meet that in full or in part). Oof!!

In bad news, this past week was not an exemplary week along those lines - I made progress on the red flower (see?) but that's it. 

In good news, I am about to go on big vacation #2 for the year, and will have time in the airport/on planes to sew. Need to make sure my little sewing light is all charged up. :D

Full flowers: 11/64 (4 started)

- Catherine