Embroidery Treasures

I always have lots of projects in my mind and always think they will take less times than they actually do. That's exactly the situation I am finding myself in right now.

I have a queen size quilt I am stitching for a customer right now that has to be done by this weekend for Christmas. I should now be at the quilting point, correct? And where in actual time do I find myself at the moment?

I just finished cutting out all the pieces for the quilt top minus the borders. My goal of getting started early this morning turned out to be about 2 pm this afternoon. Then I had plan A drawn out and calculated for cutting, when I discovered that there was not enough fabric for plan A.

So after typing in calculations for plan B, C, D, E and F in my Bernina Quilter program, I have finally come up with the combination for the quilt blocks. I think. I hope I will have enough fabric to get all the pieces I need. But who knows, by the time I'm finished, I may be clear through the alphabet.

Since this quilt needs to be done by Saturday and I'll be out of town Friday and I do have other things to do this week, my goal that I made late last night was to get all, yes, ALL 42 blocks pieced by tonight.

And I'm off to a really good start considering that it is 5:30 pm and I have one block stitched (I had to stitch one block to be sure all my measurements were correct, since I was scrimping on fabric) and most of the quilt top pieces cut.

I have a habit - good or bad, I'm not sure - to time myself with certain tasks and figure out how many repeats I can do in an hour and then figure out how long the entire task will take. It took 15 minutes to stitch the pineapple log cabin blocks and there are 20 left to stitch. That means I can stitch 4 in an hour. Which means I'll have half the quilt done in four hours or hopefully by 10 pm. Maybe I'll pick up speed as I go along???

Then I have 21 nine patch blocks to stitch. Although those will be quick since I can sew strips together, cut the strips and stitch the pieces together again. But it still does take time...maybe and hour or so.....???

And hopefully I won't run out of fabric and have to take time out trying to decide what to put in place of the missing piece.

And hopefully I won't run into difficulty with any of the blocks. Because, you know, I have to have all the points and seams match or I'm just not happy with it. :)

And the more I think about it, the more I'm certain that it may no longer be Monday, December 17th when I am finished stitching the last of the 42 blocks.......what do you think?

I think my best plan of action may be to quit typing and get to sewing....and on that note, I'm getting back to my sewing machine. When I start stitching crooked seams, I'll take a break and update you on my progress......

my hopefully enough pieces of fabric