10 Minutes a Day in 2016

Hi! and welcome to my first post of 2016.

This is going to be a busy year!

I have such plans for my pattern designs, both knitted and quilted, I'm going to become a grandparent for the first time and I'm going to do a lot of travelling. It's going to be a lot of fun!

Knowing what was ahead, I started to be careful what I committed to towards the end of last year. 

The usual rounds of quilt alongs and swaps needed be declined. It was hard to say no, but its no good agreeing to do something if I don't have the time to see it through.

My little grandson will be born any day now, and I've been busy making organic baby clothes, blankets, fitted crib sheets, all of which I'll show you in another post. I've been to Toronto to help his Mum and Dad get their house ready for his arrival, and I'll go again as soon as he is born.

I've managed to keep up with some of the groups I'm in, but deadlines are hard, especially when you're not even on the right side of the world.

My sewing has to be done as and when it fits into my schedule this year, but I don't want to give up on the things that are important to me, like making quilts for Siblings Together.

Last year I made several for them, including this one.

and this one.

It was whilst I was rushing around trying to complete everything I'm committed to for this month, that I had an idea. Just because I can't commit to deadlines, doesn't mean I can't still make a Siblings Together quilt or two. I just need to make it slowly, on my own, rather than as part of a group where I might let people down.

I looked at my stash of scraps. Its huge!

I keep even the tiniest pieces. I have this box full of odd size little scraps. They are so little they usually get rejected whenever I'm hunting for pieces for a specific quilt bee block.

I have this box full of squares I cut over a year ago in preparation for a postage stamp quilt. Those little pieces are just 1.5" square! The quilt of course never got started!

I have Jelly Rolls that I've never used and lots of blocks that were either experiments or just didn't make the cut when I was making previous quilts.

So my plan is to try to spend just 10 minutes a day, or an hour a week, sewing up the scrappy pieces into a scrappy quilt for Siblings Together. They will be simple blocks that take no thought or preparation - nine patches and string blocks. Anyone can find 10 minutes a day, surely. I'm not putting any pressure on myself. If it doesn't get done, or I'm away, then no worries. But when I can I shall put that 10 minutes to good use. 

A 10 minute coffee break spent chain piecing. Getting up 10 minutes early and cutting up some scraps. Doing 10 minutes sewing before I go to bed. 10 minutes sewing instead of 10 minutes on social media.

Its surprising just how much you can get done in 10 minutes. 

I chain pieced 40 postage stamp pieces into twos yesterday. 

I made them into 20 four patches today!

To keep myself accountable, to spur myself on, and hopefully to encourage someone else to do the same, I'm documenting my progress on Instagram (I'm mackandmabel). I shall be using the hashtags

#10forsiblingstogether and #10minutesaday

I'll share progress on this blog from time to time when there is more to see.

If you have scraps to spare why not join me!

It Wasn't Meant To Happen

It wasn't meant to happen. It wasn't supposed to be like this! This should have been a knitting post. I should have had a finish to show you, BUT a quilt idea got into my head, I tried to push it to the back, I told it to take it's turn, but NO, it wouldn't leave me alone, until finally I admitted defeat and started to make it. I don't need this quilt! I have requests for other quilts waiting to be started, but this little upstart has bamboozled it's way to the top of the list!

How? you may ask.

Well, being the organised person I am, I got way ahead of myself on my Block Buster Sunday projects over the Christmas holidays. This coming Sunday it's the Economy Block. In some ways it's a pity I had already worked on this, as the whole quilting world and it's wife seem to be making economy blocks at the moment. I thought about postponing it until later in the year, but I'm going to post it anyway. There is an Economy Block Quilt Along on Instagram The hashtag is #economyblockalong. There's also an Economy Block Quilt Along on Flickr, so I thought probably one more tutorial won't go amiss.

Anyway, that is not until Sunday. The idea of the Block Buster Sundays is just to try out different blocks, NOT make whole quilts from them, but somehow there is now a work in progress to share!

My economy block quilt is going to be totally scrappy. (That's justification #1 for making it - use up the scraps). It's going to be a charity quilt (justification #2 - I should make more charity quilts) and I'm going to free motion quilt it, when I get that far ( justification #3 - I need to get out of my comfort zone with my free motion quilting on something that doesn't matter too much}

I'm also not allowing myself to sash these blocks.

The prudent quilter in me would have sashed them so that it wouldn't matter if some of the outer points on those blocks didn't line up too well, but this is the year of learning new skills, and if I go slowly sewing these blocks , then hopefully I can improve my accuracy. I also love the secondary pattern that emerges where the four outer corners of the blocks join.

So, this is my work in progress. Eight blocks made so far, a total of 48 needed. Block size is 8" finished

I will be posting the tutorial on Sunday, and hopefully have a few more blocks to show too.