After work yesterday, I told the kids we were just going to go home and relax. Every day, there is something going on - swimming, karate, a movie, a birthday party - and I am pooped! Plus, I haven't even turned on my sewing machine in two weeks! The plan was to help Jason finish his quilt and put the last couple stitches into mine since the fair starts on Tuesday.
Entering something in the fair every year is important to me. I'm not at the point where I expect ribbons, and I doubt I will ever be, but getting objective feedback from someone who doesn't know me is useful. My friends are very nice and supportive, and I need that as a novice quilter, but I doubt they would point out all the flaws in my work. I need that, too, just in much smaller doses. So that is one reason I enter my quilts in the show at the county fair. The other reason is that I love going to quilt shows and seeing lots of quilts. I feel that I am setting an example by entering my quilts. I can't complain about a show with very few quilts if I'm not willing to enter mine, now can I? Also, I hope that by entering my amateurish attempts at quilting, others will feel emboldened enough to think to themselves, "now, I can do that!"
Anyway, last night, we got about half of the buttons tied onto Jason's quilt before I could see his interest flagging. It is hard for him to tie the thread (although if you put a Transformer into his hands, suddenly he is Mr. Nimble Fingers!), and as much as I itched to do it for him, I knew that would be wrong. So, we'll work on it some more tonight. While he was tying, between "I need some help here, Mom"s, I thought I'd catch up on what my friends have been doing in blogland. HOURS later, I finally stumbled off to bed without having even touched my quilt. My, you guys have been busy. And I kept seeing interesting names of other blogs on your "Blogs I Follow" lists that I just had to check out. And then there were all the links you guys added. STOP! How's a gal to get any quilting done!?! I think I'm caught up now, and as long as I never go away without internet access again, I might be able to avoid the Blogland Black Hole that I disappeared into last night.
I did decide to do a Celtic Knotwork Mystery - see Lynne's blog on my sidebar. I've never done a mystery before, I've been wanting to try a Celtic looking quilt, and this one uses scrappy 2 1/2" squares, of which I have two tins already pre-cut. I know I shouldn't be starting something new, but this will at least give me just one or two blocks to work on a week so that I am still using my machine while I am focusing on getting more hand quilting done.
