I’m so sick of staring at my endless mustard afghan, that I think I’m going to take the afternoon to quilt today just to save my sanity. Try to get at least one of those quilt tops put together with the blocks I found in my stash. I just have to neaten my studio, and have lunch with DH, then I’m putting on some music, lighting a candle, and hiding in my studio the rest of the day!
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What a wonderful way to spend your afternoon!
I totally get the hiding. I love my people, but I’m getting so much quilting done because of needing alone time.
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I love your blocks! Are you going to use these fabrics throughout all your BOMs? Those fussy cut middles are perfect!
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Your speed is definitely inspirational @Edel! I have a lot of WIPs/UFOs/plans that never even made it into one of those two, because in my mind quilting takes a looooong time. And I don’t have a lot of time, so I postpone working on them. But seeing you and others finish things so fast makes me realize that it doesn’t necessarily take 6 months to finish a quilt.
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@MightyMitochondria & @JoyfulClover, are you guys working on anything right now?
MightyMitochondria, I know you’d mentioned using this group to help you get over your quilting anxiety, is it working? Do you have any fun, wonky quilt ideas? The nice thing with quilting is that you don’t have to fit in any molds, you can make whatever you want, because that’s how you like it! One of my favorite quilting tips is ‘do what works best for you.’
JoyfulClover, did you decide to go for it with the tree blocks? Were you thinking of using scraps to make those? It seems like that block would be good for either using scraps, or creating scraps 
.
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I think the more you do, the more you find shortcuts. It’s slow if you need it to be perfect, with everything lining up exactly as it should. But if you are comfortable about some mistakes, it can be fairly fast.
In other news, I need a long arm!
@AudiobookLover I like that quote. And also perfection is the enemy of completion
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OMG, I just realized she is here in Hamilton. With me. For realz.
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If something says “Each triangle square should be 3 1/2” square including seam allowances.”
That just means cut it down to 3 1/2 and it’ll be good to go for the next step, right?
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Yes, it does.
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Thank you for the quick response!!
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I haven’t had great success, or enjoyment, quilting on a domestic straight stitch machine so have avoided larger projects. This QAYG joining method looks good though, I like how all the backing fabrics show on the front. You could choose all the same fabric or different for each block or a pattern or whatever. You could even use a different quilt block for the backing to make a double sided quilt. I don’t want to send a quilt out and have to pay to have it finished but I sure don’t want to do it myself for anything larger than a pillow case. I will bookmark this to try.
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It’s funny that you mentioned Quilt As You Go. I had been thinking about that method recently, although I had never done it before. I had wondered how exactly the method worked, so that tutorial was really informative.
I personally don’t mind sending my quilt out to be finished. I take mine to a local small quilt shop, so it feels good to me to support a small business.
I love how she did that with those embroidered blocks! I have a lot of vintage hankies that could be used for this…I really don’t want to quilt on the hankies themselves since some are fragile and nicely patterned…
I was thinking exactly vintage embroidered hankies! They could be fused to some stabilizer to give them strength but they’d make a better runner or something else like that than a quilt that would need washing. Some of them are like tissue, they are so delicate!
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FEBRUARY’S INSIRATION PROMPT
February is the month of love, so the prompt is: make something with hearts! You can use fabric with hearts, you can make a second of Edel’s heart block, or you can find a different heart block pattern and try that! What does your 
desire?
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I am currently finishing up a quilt as you go bag right now. June Tailor sells a variety of QAYG items, like placemats, mug rugs, bags, and quilts. It’s a piece of premarked batting along with instructions on which order to sew everything. My mom did a few of the QAYG quilts and finished them all up in @Edel time! They were actually decent sized and I’ve always thought they would make good quilts for donation because they can be made so quickly! I’ll see if I can find a pic of the three she did and hopefully, I’ll soon be posting a pic of my completed bag as well!
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@Edel’s heart blocks would make for a really nice table runner! If only I could run at Edel speed, this would go from idea to table runner in a matter of hours!
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And it’s done. Too dark now for proper pix. So it’s time to tidy up and have a glass of wine. 8pm here, so I’m handing over to you ladies to quilt for the rest of the day.
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@Magpie it actually goes on on a regular machine. I don’t do anything fancy, mostly quilt in the ditch. This quilt was easier because I used polyester batting, wool batting is more effort. This one is 70"x54", there is a small bit of wrestling, but only when you’re right in the middle.
@AudiobookLover I’d be interested in seeing those QAYG patterns too
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